


Ordinary Love

by audreyii_fic



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies), Thor (Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Drabble Collection, Drama, Exhibitionism, Explicit Sexual Content, F/M, Fluff, Humor, Romance, slight crack
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-04-23
Updated: 2014-10-26
Packaged: 2018-01-20 13:40:06
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 36
Words: 55,967
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1512575
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/audreyii_fic/pseuds/audreyii_fic
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Odin sees fit to banish <i>both</i> of his sons for their transgressions in Jotunheim. Now Jane has a new research assistant and Darcy's got those pets she always wanted. What could possibly go wrong? <i>(Drabble series that grew without the author's permission. Now complete.)</i></p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Wherein Loki gets laid, Thor plays wingman, and Darcy can't find her iPod.

**Author's Note:**

> Best to just concede the reality of the situation and give this AU the separate listing it deserves. Sigh.
> 
> Title from the U2 song of the same name.

**symbollalagy asked: Au where Loki is banished, not Thor. Odin takes his power, but not his impressive intellect. Maybe he learns Mifgardian science? ?**

 

_Wherein Loki gets laid, Thor plays wingman, and Darcy can't find her iPod. (Romance-ish/Humor. PG-13.)_

_Not exactly the prompt, and not as smutty as intended, and it sort of got away from me, but… isn’t that the way of things?_

 

 

 

Thor feels guilty.

This is not a common state for him. Guilt is a companion of regret, and while Thor is not a stranger to regret, he is certainly not on a first name basis with it. But if this current state of affairs does not soon alter, he suspects he may become more familiar with the emotion than he ever imagined.

It is unjust that Loki has been banished along with him. Thor doesn’t believe for a moment that  _he_ deserves to be banished, either — they were defending Asgard against the Frost Giants, as had their father, and his father before them! — but Loki hadn’t even _wanted_ to go to Jotunheim, had in fact counseled against it. The responsibility for the battle lay on Thor’s shoulders, and thus should the consequences as well.

But the All-Father had not listened, called them unworthy children in need of a sharp lesson, and saw fit to cast them from their home to this dusty, bland little corner of Midgard, Thor without Mjolnir, Loki without Mother’s tricks.

Thor’s shame is only amplified by the intense relief he feels at knowing they are still together. He should desire Loki be back in Asgard, but in his heart he cannot wish them parted, even in exile. But at least Loki must feel the same.

At least, Thor thinks so.

They had lost each other on the journey across realms. Thor was immediately struck by a horseless carriage and brought to primitive medics against his will, but Loki did not wander into the village tavern until the next morning, looking dazed, ashen, and deeply troubled. He showed no interest in pancakes, no matter how Thor encouraged him. Something had changed in his brother over those few short hours, but Loki would not say what.

Indeed, his brother has said very little at all — except for his conversations with the woman Jane Foster. When it became clear that Loki, more widely-traveled than Thor himself, possessed the greater knowledge of the Rainbow Bridge (or “wormhole” as she referred to it — an odd designation, as there are certainly no worms involved), Jane had launched attacks of inquiry as relentless as Sif’s blade. Even Loki’s uncharacteristic distance could not withstand the assault. Soon he answered her questions, asked a few of his own, and did so with a smile. Later he even exerted his considerable prowess of persuasion — the All-Father may have taken Loki’s magic, but nothing could steal his silver tongue — to prevent the abduction of Jane Foster’s laboratory by a battalion clad in black.

When the battalion drove away, leaving her beloved research unmolested, Jane Foster looked at Loki as though he had hung the stars in the heavens.

His brother had not appeared displeased by this.

In another situation, Thor might playfully attempt to turn the mortal’s attention from Loki to himself. They had competed for women since time immeasurable, as brothers do, with Thor most often the victor. Such fraternal contest is all in good fun. And this Jane Foster, Midgardian though she is, has an indefinable appeal about her that cannot help but catch the eye. Under different circumstances…

But Thor feels guilty.

It is for this reason that when Darcy, she of the loud mouth and easy air, assigns him the quest of seeking a vanished Eye-Pod, Thor chooses not to knock upon the door of Jane Foster’s wheeled abode — for the sounds coming from within are decidedly unmistakable.

_"Yes, keep— keep going— oh, God—"_

_"That would… be the idea…"_

_"I said keep going! No talking!"_

Then nothing but pants and moans.

Obviously Jane Foster is more grateful for the rescue of her equipment than Thor realized.

When Thor returns to the lab having willingly abandoned his hunt for the Eye-Pod, Darcy is displeased. “I just downloaded like thirty songs onto there,” she says, perched upon a chair and searching the cabinets with a single-minded determination. “If those men-in-black walked off with it, I’m gonna be _so_ pissed.”

Thor nods. “The theft of one’s property must be answered with swift retribution.”

"Damn straight."

"Yet the item you seek may still be within Jane Foster’s possession. You ought question her on the subject come morning."

"Huh? You didn’t even ask? Dude, you had _one job_.”

"I shall not," Thor says gravely, "disturb my brother in the act of conquest."

Darcy drops a sizeable box of Pop-Tarts with a thud. (It shall not be sizeable for long, for he is again requiring sustenance. How do mortals find time to accomplish anything, being always so consumed by hunger?) She jumps down and runs for the walled window to look across the yard — and her eyes promptly widen to the size of saucers. “Holy shit,” she says. “When the trailer’s a-rockin', don’t come a-knockin’.”

"I beg your pardon?"

"Nothing. Totally made the right call, though. You have _no idea_ how bad Jane’s needed this.”

Thor nods again. “Loki as well.”

"Really? I thought he was more of an Equus type." Darcy shrugs at Thor’s look of confusion. "You know, that story in Erik’s book. With the horse."

Thor blanches. “If you value your life, Darcy,” he says, “ _never_ speak of that incident within my brother’s hearing.”

"What about the one where you’re in a dress?" Thor just glares, and Darcy raises her hands in a conciliatory gesture. "Not judging. Once I went to this frat party, and they had Jell-O shooters, and when I woke up the next morning I…"

The tale that follows leaves Thor determined that, once he and Loki discover a way back home, this Darcy Lewis must be introduced to the wonders of Asgardian mead.

(And, based on the noises which now carry through the windows and into the lab, Thor rather suspects that Jane Foster will be coming along as well.)

 

 


	2. Wherein everything is sticky.

**masayume85 said: Fluff and sex and happy. That’s what I need. I am still in mental recovery after that drabble.**

 

_Wherein everything is sticky. (PWP. NC-17.)_  
  
 _Credit to the husband for coming up with the idea of skating the fluff request by using literal fluff. Because that’s about as close as I can get._  


 

 

  
“They’re called s’mores,” Darcy Lewis informs the Princes of Asgard. White fluff oozes from between her fingers as she passes Loki some sort of gooey, sticky, incomprehensible mess. “It’s food, I promise.”  
  
Thor looks hurt not to have received one first, and she tells him: “None for you till you let go of my iPod. You’ll gum up the screen.”  
  
“But I’ve yet to conquer the avalanche of color and travel from the land of—”  
  
Jane Foster rolls her eyes. “Why,” she says to her servant (no, intern), “did you tell him about Candy Crush?”  
  
“Because you wouldn’t let me help him set up a Facebook account.”  
  
Loki and Thor glance at each other. Based on all the mortals have said The Book of Faces seems to be an object of great sorcery, and even Thor in his recklessness is agreed that without Loki’s powers to guard them it is best not to meddle in such things.  
  
“The fire pit isn’t for _marshmallows_ , Darcy. It’s for me when I need to _think_.”  
  
“No, it _was_ for you and your science moping. Now it’s for keeping the pets fed. At least until you guys are willing to eat something zapped.”  
  
“The tiny oven takes away the taste,” Loki says, and utterly ignores what has to be Jane Foster’s fifth attempt to explain the ‘science’ of the so-called microwave. He knows magic when he sees it, even if he can’t feel it.  
  
He can’t feel it.  
  
How long is he supposed to live half-blind?  
  
“Dude, you’re supposed to eat it, not squish it.” Darcy Lewis narrows her eyes behind her spectacles and nods to the goo that now covers his palm. “Yeesh, your mom’s supposed to teach you not to play with your food.”  
  
The s’more crunches in Loki’s grip.  
  
The remark is sufficient even to distract Thor from his crushing of the candy. “Take care,” says Thor. He sets aside the Eye-Phone. “That is the Queen of Asgard of whom you speak.”  
  
Thor worries for Frigga as Loki himself does, Loki knows. In this they are still united.  
  
His brother had been unshakeable in his certainty that his precious friends would come to their aid, save them from exile, and return them to their rightful place in Asgard; Loki’s faith in Sif and the Warriors Three could be easily contained in one of the mugs Thor keeps smashing, but he had been sure Mother would intervene on their behalf.  
  
But it has been a week, with nary a sign of their (no, just Thor’s) friends, nor of their mother.  
  
Perhaps the All-Father has stripped Mother of _her_ magic, as well. She would never suffer to lose them in this way otherwise.  
  
If Darcy Lewis understands that she ought tread lightly, she shows no sign of it. She only hands Thor a s’more of his own. “Jane, you want one?”  
  
Jane Foster’s face was not difficult to read upon their first meeting. Now, after many days and seeing her expressions in a… variety… of circumstances, she is an open book. (Perhaps that is the meaning behind the Book of Faces.) She wishes to object on principle; she wants the s’more.  
  
Her internal war is rather beguiling.  
  
He must admit, the company here on Midgard has thus far proved a substantial improvement. He has no objection to trading the ingratitude of his ‘friends’ for the respect and admiration of these mortals. (And it was beyond ingratitude to outright loathing in some cases. After this many centuries one would think Sif would get over a simple prank. She’s more attractive as a brunette anyway.)  
  
Jane Foster glances at the remains of the s’more in Loki’s fingers, then takes half of what’s left without so much as a ‘please’. “I only want a couple bites,” she explains as Loki stares in disbelief. “And Darcy’s right, you’re just squishing it anyway.”  
  
And she pops it in her mouth, smearing her lips with white fluff and dark sauce.  
  
Perhaps he overestimated their respect.  
  
Thor laughs at this. “I cannot recall you ever permitting someone to steal right from your hand, brother.” He begins to consume his treat as well. It’s gone in less than ten seconds. “I like it,” he says. “May I have another?”  
  
If Loki has never permitted someone to steal from his hand, Thor has certainly never said _May I_ in the whole of his existence.  
  
For all his envy, repressed anger, and frequent disgust with his brother, Loki cannot but grudgingly concede that this exile would be far worse without Thor by his side. And without his hammer, without Sif and the Warriors Three, he is more the brother Loki remembers of their youth. The one he loved more than he loathed.  
  
Father removing Mjolnir from Thor’s hand might have been the wisest thing he’d done in centuries.  
  
Removing Loki’s magic, on the other hand, might be the most cruel.  
  
He cannot take this blindness for much longer without going mad.  
  
“Dude, seriously, it’s just marshmallows and Hershey’s. It’s not going to poison you,” says Darcy Lewis, and Loki realizes there are three pairs of eyes on him.  
  
Well. He will certainly not be bested by Thor in something as simple as eating a Midgardian snack. He takes a bite from the mess that remains in his hand.  
  
The crust is a little stale. The sauce is processed beyond recognition. The fluff is too sweet.  
  
It’s very, very good.  
  
Then Thor begins to laugh again, and Darcy Lewis along with him. Even Jane Foster is visibly biting the inside of her cheek to repress a smile.  
  
Loki bristles. “What’s so amusing?”  
  
Thor and Darcy Lewis only laugh harder, but Jane shakes her head. “Come on,” she says, taking his sleeve and tugging him in the direction of the ladder. “I’ve got napkins in the trailer.”  
  
He doesn’t miss the way Darcy Lewis waggles her eyebrows at Thor. Or the way his brother nods sagely in response.  
  
Still better than Sif and the Warriors Three, though.  
  
In the metal box Jane Foster calls a home she hands him a moistened cloth, smiling the whole while, though there’s no mockery in it. But she seems to note his discomfort, and says, “S’mores are always messy. I probably don’t look a lot better.”  
  
Given that Jane Foster looks as though she’s been dining with Volstagg, that says it all. This is incredibly frustrating. He doesn’t like appearing dirty or disheveled; whenever he winds up unkempt he covers it with illusion until he can clean himself. Not an option here. “That bad, is it?”  
  
“I’m not going to tell you. You’ll just get snippy.”  
  
Mortal colloquialisms are still eluding him. “Snippy?”  
  
“Never mind. God, your hands are a mess, too.” She grabs more napkins and wipes at his sticky palm. It’s the same palm that turned blue in the grasp of the Jotun warrior. “Between Thor smashing the cups and you crushing the desserts I don’t know how—”  
  
He silences her with a kiss.  
  
He simply doesn’t feel good right now, and the best he’s felt since he arrived in this realm was in this trailer, with little mortal Jane Foster astride his lap and moaning against his mouth. He wants to feel that again. He does not want to fret over incomprehensible idioms and sticky food and his wretched powerlessness and seeing his own skin turn to ice.  
  
Jane Foster makes it possible to forget.  
  
Also, her lips taste lovely when covered in s’mores.  
  
Her surprise quickly fades into responsiveness (and she is _such_ a responsive little thing, this mortal) and she doesn’t object when he grips her hair and tilts her head to the side so he can delve deeper. Sugar and sweetness and _humanity_ , which, at this moment, is a thousand times more appealing than any Aesir with their mockery. Perhaps they all knew the entire time. Perhaps he was the only one who believed himself one of them.  
  
(If he is not. If, if, if. Loki does not care for uncertainty.)  
  
She pulls back from the kiss when Loki tightens his fist a little too hard. Mortals are delicate, he must remember this. He quickly schools his expression into something far less… tumultuous. He’s long since learned not to show any emotion he does not wish to reveal, and Jane Foster, bright and clever enough to pry apart his explanations of the Bifrost into her her theorems, is not particularly skilled at reading faces.  
  
But after a moment he realizes she’s not actually trying to read his expression. She’s examining the smears that must cover his cheeks. And she shrugs. “Oh, well. We’re going to have to shower either way.” Then she wraps her arms around his neck and pulls him back down to begin licking the fluff from the corner of his mouth.  
  
There is a practicality to this woman that Loki cannot but admire.  
  
Loki has been held in dungeons roomier than Jane Foster’s chambers (all situations that Thor got them into and then, admittedly, smashed them out of again). This requires creativity, but Loki is nothing if not inventive, and Jane Foster is nothing if not accommodating. As last time, he sits upon the hard board she calls a bed and she straddles his lap, moving with an urgency that tells him clearly as words she has been lonely for quite some time.  
  
Some other man’s loss is his gain. Loki is more than willing to reap the benefits of her long deprivation.  
  
This time lacks the air of admiration of the last, when she so clearly was overcome by her gratitude for his rescue of her research that she could not express herself in any other manner. He had taken her appreciation then without a sliver of regret. But this is better. This is simple lust, and perhaps a touch of fondness. Something uncomplicated.  
  
And so soothing that Loki doesn’t even mind when Jane Foster takes one of his hands from her hip and places it on her breast in a command that would have irritated him in any other circumstance. “Here,” she gasps. “Hard. Please.”  
  
If he had his magic he could touch her everywhere at once. He could bring her to screaming climax in seconds, or tease every nerve ending for hours until she begged for mercy.  
  
Here — _here_ — half himself and hollow, he is limited to kneading the small soft swell of her breast and nipping lines along her throat as she rocks against him until he shudders under her enthusiastic ministrations, very nearly — but not quite, thank the heavens — outpacing her.  
  
But she still moans his name.  
  
It is difficult to feel inadequate with a lover climaxing in one’s arms.  
  
And when she collapses against him, sweaty and sticky and panting against his shoulder, he forgets, just for a few moments, all the cracks in his worlds.  
  
Perhaps exile is not _entirely_ without its merits.


	3. Wherein Frigga checks on her sons, Darcy introduces Thor to Jägermeister, Loki and Jane get a proper bed, and Audrey answers her own prompt.

**audreyii_fic said: dammit i just wanna write some mama!frigga and y’all can’t stop me YOLO BITCHEZ**

 

_Wherein Frigga checks on her sons, Darcy introduces Thor to Jägermeister, Loki and Jane get a proper bed, and Audrey answers her own prompt. Because reasons. (Drama/Romance. PG.)  
_

_Still in the Odinsons Are Banished AU, where it's possible -- just possible -- that not everything will end in fire and blood._

 

***

 

 

Frigga, wife of Odin, mistress of mages, Queen of the Realm Eternal, does not take a horse down the Rainbow Bridge this night. The walk is long, but she needs the time. She needs the air.

She needs many things.

She needs strength, to rule in place of the All-Father until he awakens. She needs wisdom, to guide the Aesir through this time of upheavals. She needs patience, to end this struggle with Jotunheim before it has the chance to begin.

And right now, more than anything else, she needs her children.

Heimdall is waiting at the gates of the Bifrost, as ever he has, as ever he will. “My Queen,” he rumbles, nodding respectfully. “How fares the King?”

“Unchanged,” she says curtly. (Frigga longs for him — no matter how many times her husband falls to the Odinsleep, she never stops longing — but she still would not take back a single word that fell from her lips as he collapsed at her feet. And when he awakens, she’ll have still more words for him. Men and elves and gods have died for less than what he has done.) “I will see them, Heimdall.”

“As my Queen commands.” There is not the smallest pause in the Gatekeeper’s voice. The liege orders, and Heimdall obeys. Even when the order is a discomfiting one.

But then, those who cannot use magic will always be discomfited by its use.

“Are they well?” she asks, stepping up to where the greatsword Hofund locks together the crossroads of the realms.

“That is not for me to judge, my Queen.”

“Are they safe, then?”

“Yes. I have sworn to alert you if ever they are not.”

“Just so.” She cannot undo the All-Father’s last command — not yet. As distasteful as it is, negotiations must take place if they are to avert the horrors of war; those negotiations will pass more easily if the Frost Giants know Thor Odinson to be in exile for his crimes. And Loki…

…Frigga would not allow Loki within a thousand leagues of Laufey for all the power in all the realms.

So her sons cannot come home yet.

Unless Heimdall sees them in peril.

If he does, worlds will shatter before the might of her magic and the steel of her blade.

“Loki first,” she says, placing her hand upon Hofund’s hilt.

“I suggest we begin with Prince Thor, my Queen.”

Frigga glances at Heimdall. His expression reveals nothing — but he would not have spoken without cause. “So be it,” she says. Her grip tightens. “I am ready.”

And Heimdall — he of the Unending Watch — opens his mind.

 

***

 

When Thor appears before her, sitting in a mortal tavern, powerless but hale and whole, half the tightness in Frigga’s heart eases.

She did not doubt that Heimdall know had her sons been in danger, but there is no comparison to seeing her child with her own eyes.

Or as close to her own eyes as she can manage. Her power does not interact perfectly with Heimdall’s vision, but it will do for now. She will bear witness through him and be… if not content, then at least temporarily placated.

Thor says something to the mortal woman across the table, and then smiles. She cannot hear his words. But Frigga knows her son, and she knows his smiles, and this is a good one. An honest, genuine, sweet one.

So few now remember how very sweet her eldest can be.

Frigga loves her children beyond all things, but she is not blind to what they are becoming. She has watched Thor’s courage explode into hot-headed recklessness; she has watched Loki’s envy harden into resentment and spite. It happened as slowly and relentlessly as a glacier carving a valley between mountains. By the time the damage was clear, Frigga knew not how to repair it.

But they are her _sons_.

And all that damage does not feel so irreparable anymore, not now, not as a tavern wench places two drinks before Thor and his companion. The glasses are miniscule and contain a red liquid that nearly glows; Frigga feels a twinge of alarm that Thor is about to consume poison. Her son appears to have the same concern, for he frowns at the offering and says something clearly derogatory.

The woman answers with a discourteous, dismissive, disrespectful gesture.

And Frigga watches in amazement as her son and this mortal in the strange hat drink simultaneously. Thor makes the same face he would as a child when forced to eat something other than roasted goat. While he grimaces, the mortal reaches over to pluck a fingerful of food from his plate, and pops it in her mouth without any sign of questioning her own impudence.

And Thor?

Thor, God of Thunder, Crown Prince of Asgard, future King of the Aesir and the Realm Eternal?

Thor _laughs_.

It is the laugh of his youth, untainted by arrogance and battlelust. Frigga does not need to hear it to recognize it.

He motions to the tavern wench, and Frigga can see the word  _Another!_ form on his lips.

The mortal woman sticks her thumbs up in the air in response.

 

***

 

“That woman,” Frigga says once her consciousness has returned to the Bifrost. “I wish to have her name.”

“She is called Darcy Lewis of Midgard, my Queen.”

“And she is— is she— no.” Frigga stops herself with a shake of her head. “No. It is unimportant.”

It is _very_ important, but nevertheless, she will not inquire. Her sons are men grown, and she will see them again soon. She will ask Thor of this Darcy Lewis then, and what sort of creature she is. Frigga is not overly fond of mortals — how can one be so, when they flame and fade in mere heartbeats? — but a human who can bring smiles without swagger? Who so casually dismisses the great Thor and earns his laughter in response? Frigga will take the time to know of her.

But she will ask instead of spy.

However great the temptation to do so.

She had hoped her children would be together, but miracles are rare even amongst the gods. “Now Loki,” she tells Heimdall.

The Gatekeeper hesitates a second time. “My Queen,” he says, “if I may—”

“You may not. Show me my son.”

 

***

 

Frigga realizes her mistake at once.

And she would have retreated instantly, had it not been for the expression on Loki’s face.

If she has fretted for her elder child, she has been sick with worry for her younger. A warrior without strength is crippled, but a mage without magic is worse than blind, and her son, her son, her son who went to Jotunheim and may have seen, may have learned, only to be exiled before it could be explained…

It was at these accusations that Odin collapsed before her rage. He should not have banished her children.

But here is her youngest, and he is… well.

Heimdall’s stalling thankfully spared her (and, unknowingly, Loki himself) the embarrassment of the worst, but in what appears to be some class of Midgardian inn, a nude woman lies on her stomach on dingy sheets. She wears the unmistakable flush of satiation.

She says a word — his name on her lips — and Loki, who still rests half atop her, responds by brushing her hair from the back of her neck. He places a kiss against the exposed skin.

The mortal’s head is turned away; she cannot see the tell-tale signs of Loki’s easing. She does not witness the softening of those lines in his face that have only ever grown sharper. Even if she did she would not understand the significance.

This smiling human woman cannot know what it means that Loki of Asgard, his brow resting upon her shoulder blade, breathes deep.

 

***

 

Frigga does not stay to witness more, of course. Thirty seconds was far more than enough. “I offer you my apology,” she says to Heimdall as soon as she is able, “for dismissing your caution. I will not do so in the future.”

Heimdall only bows his head in acknowledgement.

“My son’s lover. Who is she?”

“Jane Foster of Midgard, my Queen.”

Frigga nods. “My children are… managing,” she says.

“They search for Asgard,” replies Heimdall, answering her unasked question. “They long for their powers. They long for their home.”

“When they are together — how are they? You may speak freely.”

“I have not seen them in such accord in many years, my Queen. Though they are not… without conflict.”

“I would be alarmed to hear otherwise.” Frigga stares out into the void, where the branches of Yggdrasil beckon. Her sons belong _here_ , in the Realm Eternal, her brave eldest upon the throne and her clever youngest at his right hand. It is not Frigga’s destiny to rule. She should bring them back as soon as circumstances allow.

But she thinks of the kindness in Thor’s face, and the softening in Loki’s. She thinks of what seemed irreparable. She thinks of Midgard mending what Asgard could not.

“Are there orders, my Queen?”

In her anger, in her grief, she had forgotten that there is always a purpose to everything Odin does.

Frigga turns away from the stars. “Alert me if my children are in danger,” she says. “And open the Bifrost to no one — _no one_ — until I say otherwise.”

“Yes, my Queen.”

Her sons’ fates are in their own hands.

And perhaps that is where it is meant to be.

 

 

 

 


	4. Wherein Darcy and Thor go shopping while Loki and Jane... whatever.

**puella-magi-homura-akemi asked you:** **prompts for odinsons are banished! Jane and Darcy decide to show Thor and Loki around town, like take them to a mall or a Wal-Mart or something, & drama happens. Or Loki gets bored & decides to explore. Or both.**  
  
 **mujaki said: Darcy is something of a periphery character in these drabbles (the better for Lokane goodness), but she and Thor have an interesting thing going on… how about something from her perspective starting from when the “pets” showed up?**

 

_Wherein Darcy and Thor go shopping while Loki and Jane... whatever. (Humor. G.)_

_(Vaguely combined the two. Sort of. In a way. I just wanted to write something fluffy, okay? I DON’T WANT TO HURT ANYMORE.)_

***  
  
  
  
Darcy always wanted a dog.

Not one of those little yappy squirrels-on-leashes things, either; she wanted a golden retriever like Shadow from Homeward Bound, which was her favorite movie. Sneezing whenever she’s within ten feet of fur kind of put a damper on that, but she never stopped hoping that one day she’d find a big fluffy hypoallergenic friend who would sit on the couch with her and watch TV and eat her leftovers and maybe play fetch sometimes.

Only took eighteen years, but now she’s got one.

And it’s _awesome_.

Okay, so technically he’s an alien, not a dog. But that’s even better, really. You can’t do Jägerbombs with actual dogs. Not even in New Mexico.

Of course — like her mom always warned her — pets take work. You have to take care of them, clean up after them, and make sure they’re always fed.

That last part’s the hard one.

Thor is _always_ hungry.

“All right.” Darcy pulls a thing of Orville Redenbacher’s off the shelf and holds it up for Thor’s inspection. Way up. Dude is tall. “This? Is popcorn. Dinner of champions.”

Thor pokes at the label, clearly lost. “There is sustenance in this tiny box?”

“Yup. Like, zillions of calories. It should keep you going for awhile.”

“How is it created? Magic?”

“Microwave. No—” Darcy cuts him off before he can start objecting “—don’t even say it.”

“It is dark sorcery. Roasting food over a flame—”

“—takes forever and is pissing Jane off. And all my clothes smell like smoke. Start using modern conveniences before you starve to death.”

“My brother will not agree.”

“Your brother’s never had extra-cheesy movie butter.”

Thor is getting a lot of stares. It’s not from the way he’s mystified by the cans of Campbell’s, either. Puente Antiguo is a teeny place by any standard, and six foot four inch blond muscle-y gods don’t walk through the U-Save every day of the week.

Also, it’s kinda hard to miss how Jane’s dirtbag ex’s clothes fit this guy like a  _glove_.

Another perk to alien over dog.

The end haul is popcorn, four Tombstone pizzas, two trays of Oreos, three tubes of sour-cream-and-onion Pringles, and five boxes of ham and cheese Hot Pockets. And what’s basically a barrel of Folgers. “This should last a couple days, at least,” Darcy says, handing off the bags to Thor. “Now, movies.”

Thor doesn’t even pretend to keep up while Darcy flips through the Red Box screens. That’s good, ‘cause she doesn’t exactly know how to explain it. “We better pick something with explosions,” she says. “Overhearing them go at it like bunnies is getting pretty gross.”

“I would say they are more like bilgesnipe during mating season.”

“I don’t know what that is, but it sounds gross.”

“It is. But necessary. Otherwise the bilgesnipe go mad and trample everything in their path.”

“I’m not saying the metaphor doesn’t work, just that it’s gross. Now shut up, I’m trying to choose.”

Thor shuts up. According to what Loki’s always implying, that’s weird for his brother. But Darcy doesn’t see it. Thor was kinda standoffish that first day, sure, but then Darcy gave him Pop-Tarts and since then they’ve got along great. Just keep Thor from getting hungry and show him stuff he doesn’t know about and he’s cool.

People aren’t so complicated as everyone thinks. Just don’t sweat the small stuff, and life’s a breeze.

Darcy checks her watch. They’ve been gone for forty-five minutes; that’s not enough time for _whatever_ to be done. “I think we better do Transformers,” she says, poking the Red Box screen. “Lots of super-loud things blowing up.”

“Loud enough?”

“Probably. I’ll let you crank the remote just in case.”

“Thank you.”

Darcy and Thor agreed pretty much immediately that Jane and his brother should be left alone to do… stuff… as much as possible. Sometimes that’s the two of them fussing over star charts and doing science to find another wormhole to whatever alien planet sent Thor and Loki here to begin with. And sometimes it’s whatever incredibly noisy things they get up to in Jane’s trailer… and in the lab shower… and one time what sounded like on the roof lawnchairs. Ew.

Still, Darcy’s not complaining. Jane’s been a _whole_ lot less cranky over the last few weeks. And Loki— well, Darcy doesn’t know what Loki’s usually like, but Thor says this is an improvement, so who’s she to argue? As long as they turn up to be fed once in awhile so Darcy can be sure they’re not going to die (which was at least half her job as Jane’s intern to begin with), she doesn’t care what they do.

She grabs Independence Day too, just in case. “I think you’ll like this one,” she tells Thor. “It’s got aliens. ‘Course, they’re gross and slimy and not hot, but still.”

“Not hot? Are they frozen, then, as Frost Giants?”

“No, I mean, hot, like, you know—” she gestures vaguely at Thor “— _hot_.”

Nope, he’s not getting it. Cute, but a little slow on the uptake. But then, so are golden retrievers. “Never mind,” says Darcy. “We’ll pick up a couple Channing Tatum flicks tomorrow and then it’ll all make sense.”

“You are very wise, Darcy Lewis.”

“Yeah. I know.”

 

 

 


	5. Wherein Loki and Jane use each other while Darcy and Thor play video games.

****cake-over-flowers asked you: Jane Foster seduces Loki with bad intentions, instead of the other way around.** **

**mujaki said: Loki showed up in Midgard later than Thor did looking as though he had seen a ghost. What happened to him between his landing and showing up at the diner (as he clearly wasn’t creamed by an oncoming vehicle).**  
  
  
 _Neither of these are exactly what was requested, but it involves sex, so that should clear up any dissatisfaction, right?_

 

 _Wherein Loki and Jane use each other while Darcy and Thor play video games. (PWP/Angst. NC-17.)_  
  
  
  
  
  
She wakes up to warm lips brushing down her throat and long fingers stroking under her shirt.

Jane isn’t a little girl with stars in her eyes. At least, not _those_ kinds of stars. She grew up a long time ago (in a series of incremental steps, though Donald was probably the biggest and most final). And it’s not like Loki whispers sweet nothings in her ear. He’s using her. She’s not sure of the details, because there seems to be a lot going on for him that he hasn’t explained and she doesn’t understand, but he’s still using her.

The thing is, being a grown-up, she doesn’t _mind_. Not when the sex is this good. Hell, after two years, she would have been perfectly satisfied with just ‘okay’.

This is a lot better than ‘okay’.

Still, he should knock first. “There’s this thing called privacy,” she mumbles, rolling over in what can’t really be considered a bed. “We like it here on Earth.”

“Your Midgardian customs are overvalued.”

“Still my customs. Still my trailer.”

“Your ‘trailer’ is even more overvalued than your customs.”

She doesn’t disagree, but there’s not a lot of other options. The night in the motel was nice, but a budget’s a budget, and her funding’s low enough as it is. “What time is it?”

“The moon is high.”

“Not the standard of measurement I wanted.” Jane pulls away from Loki’s roaming hands enough to sit up and glance at the clock. Three in the morning. “Ugh. Why did you nap all afternoon?”

“I was tired.”

“If you slept at night like a normal person that wouldn’t happen.”

He scowls. “Mortality is ridiculous. I’ve no notion how you humans have managed to create an entire civilization when you spend a third of your lives unconscious.”

“What, you never had to sleep before?”

“Not unless I saw fit to do so.”

If all this god-to-human transformation stuff is true — and she’s still not sure it is, though Thor and Loki are definitely convinced of it — then Jane knows some biologists who would give their right arms to study these guys. “Well, _some_ of us need to rest. Especially when there’s never any coffee. Which, by the way, is probably contributing to why your circadian rhythms are all messed up.”

“You drink coffee.”

“Yeah, two or three cups, not two or three pots. If you and Thor don’t cut back you’re going to do yourselves serious damage.”

“I did not come here to bandy words with you, Jane Foster.” He kneels on the floor — there’s barely enough room — and takes her by the waist, turning her hips towards his. She’s only wearing an old t-shirt and underwear… and the latter’s off in seconds.

Loki hitches her legs over his shoulders and begins to kiss his way up the inside of her thigh.

All right-y then.

There aren’t really words to describe how weird Jane’s life has become. Three weeks ago she was alone except for Darcy, who only ever understood one word in four that came out of her mouth and was impervious to any directives or lectures. Even a political science major ought to understand something as _basic_ as the Schwarzschild metric. And Erik, the only other person who mattered, lived on the other side of the world. For all intents and purposes, it was just Jane.

Then she started getting anomalous readings in the area. Then Erik flew out to help. Then a man appeared out of nowhere — literally out of nowhere — and she grazed him with her van. Then she took the man to the hospital, took the man back out of the hospital, took him home, took him to the diner, and picked up a _second_ man who didn’t so much appear out of nowhere as stumble in from the desert. Then she realized this second man knew nearly as much about Einstein-Rosen bridges as she did, even though he used completely different terminology. Then she learned more in three hours than she’d learned in three months.

Then a bunch of men in black tried to steal her research. Then the second man, through a combination of cajoling, threats, and disturbingly impenetrable logic, convinced them to go away. Then the second man smiled at her as though it was just another day’s work.

Then Jane thanked him. Then Jane hugged him. Then Jane kissed him. Then he kissed her back.

And… well.

Now Jane’s not so alone. Erik’s gone on some research opportunity, but she’s got two new residents who Darcy refers to as ‘pets’, and one of them is both brilliant and insatiable, even though that second part is an issue at inconvenient hours of the day. The other is getting freakishly good at Wii.

Yes. A weird life.

But weird isn’t always bad.

Jane once heard Thor refer to Loki’s ‘silver tongue’, but that’s not really accurate. Loki uses his whole mouth, not just his tongue. He works at her like he’s eating a peach, messy and consuming and moaning nearly as loud as Jane herself.

But only nearly. When his teeth graze lightly in just the right place she makes a keening noise she’s going to be embarrassed about later and fists her hands in his hair hard enough that he ought to push her away.

He just digs his fingers into her waist and presses even closer.

Sometimes — sometimes at times like this, sometimes when they’re at the table poring over data, sometimes when he’s standing in front of the mirror scowling at the way his hair has gone wavy in the dry desert heat — those fingers twitch and turn, like he’s trying to make something happen. When she asked about it, he referred once, and only once, to having been stripped of his magic tricks.

Jane doesn’t remember exactly what she said in response, but it was skeptical and dismissive — and in retrospect, it shouldn’t have been. Loki has refused to speak of it since. But his hands still move on instinct.

She asked Thor, too, but he’d only shaken his head and said to leave it be.

Loki licks his way inside and Jane digs her heels into his back. She’s going to leave bruises. “Oh, God, that’s good,” she gasps.

He moans something in response that sounds vaguely like _Louder_.

Jane obliges.

A moment later it _is_ the silver tongue that gets the job done, though the way his thumb creeps down from her hip to circle and stroke deserves a lot of credit too. When Jane comes back down to earth — who knows where she went, maybe Asgard — Loki’s got his cheek resting against her thigh, his eyes closed. “Your turn,” she pants, trying to pull him up. There’s not a lot of space, but they’ve learned to manage.

He shakes his head.

“You sure?”

He nods.

Oh.

Jane hesitates, then — because it seems like the thing to do — cards her fingers through his now completely-mussed hair. He hums slightly and smiles in response.

It’s times like this that she _knows_ she’s being used. There’s something… _off_ about Loki, something moody and dark, like he’s edging along a cliff wall and trying not to look down at the valley below. And somehow he’s latched onto _this_ as a lifeline. Why or how, Jane’s not sure, and she’s pretty sure she couldn’t figure it out even if she tried, even if she understood that sort of thing, which she doesn’t and never has. But he’s definitely using her.

Of course, she’s using him too. But that’s a fair trade, isn’t it? Untold scientific possibilities and incredible orgasms in return for… whatever she’s giving him that he seems to need so badly.

Also, Jane’s never been needed before.

It’s kind of a good feeling.

After a moment, Jane realizes Loki isn’t just basking. He’s falling asleep. “Get up,” she says, shaking his shoulder. “There’s no room down there.”

He responds by murmuring something incoherent and crawling up into bed with her. That’s not going to feel much better than the floor, come morning, given how long his legs are. But he spoons tight against her back and no one falls off.

They’re using each other, but it’s nice. It’s nice not being alone.

She’s almost asleep too when he mumbles: “Wasn’t cold, was it?”

“Cold?” Weird. “No. ‘Course not. Go to sleep.”

He heaves what can only be a sigh of relief.

In the morning they have stiff necks and backaches. Darcy rolls her eyes at both of them and proceeds to slaughter Thor at SoulCalibur.  
  
  


 


	6. Wherein SHIELD agents get bored and the Odinsons have words.

**mujaki said: [Loki] likely found [Mjolnir] during his sojourn in the desert that first night. He very much misses his magic (a sorcerer without magic being half blind, you know) but I think he decided to hide it’s location after witnessing the drastic change in his brother as well as clinging to Jane.**  


 

_Wherein SHIELD agents get bored and the Odinsons have words. (Drama/Humor. PG.)_

 

 

Surveillance of Subject A and Subject B is, without a doubt, the most boring detail Agents James Dion and Adele Hakim have ever pulled.

Coulson’s favorites — like Barton — get to watch the hammer. Okay, maybe it’s just stuck in a rock, but there’s interesting readings coming off of it sometimes, and at least there’s lots of other agents to talk to. Dion and Hakim have been partners for a long time, but after three weeks of  _nothing_ they’re starting to seriously get on each others’ nerves.

“It’s my turn with the audio,” says Dion, setting aside the binoculars. “My eyes are killing me.”

Hakim snorts and takes off the headphones. “Fine,” she says. “Have fun listening to Born in the USA.”

“Are you trash-talking Springsteen? ‘Cause I won’t stand for that.”

“Someone’s got ahold of the jukebox. Can’t hear a damn thing _except_ Springsteen. You try it for two hours and see what _you_ think of him.”

There’s only so much to _do_ on this mission. It was kind of cool at first, what with all the talk of space travel and stuff — they’ve seen some weird shit in S.H.I.E.L.D. but this is a first — not to mention the free show with Subject B and the scientist. That thing on the roof was hot enough that Dion and Hakim were left glancing at each other, even though they’ve been partners for three years and it would be like having sex with a sibling.

Now, though? Even porn gets boring after awhile. And the intern and Subject A are even less interesting. It sucks to watch other people browse kitten memes.

And tonight they’re stuck staring at the outside of the bar from a rooftop. Whatever Subjects A and B are doing in there, Dion and Hakim can neither see nor hear it.

Worst. Detail. Ever.

“I’m bringing an aardvark—“

“Oh no.”

“—to Albuquerque.”

“I’m not playing, Dion.”

“That’s because you always lose.”

“I do _not_ always lose. There was the time.”

“That didn’t count. We were getting shot at.”

“I still won.”

“Bullshit. Aardvark. Albuquerque.”

“You’re an asshole. I’m bringing an aardvark to Albuquerque and a badger to Boston.”

“I’m bringing an aardvark to Albuquerque, a badger to Boston, and a crayfish to Chattanooga.”

“Crawfish.”

“What?”

“It’s crawfish, not crayfish.”

“Are you kidding me with this?”

“If you look at a menu in any place south of—” Hakim cuts off. She raises the binoculars higher. Her entire body goes into alert position. “Hang on, we’ve got something happening here.”

Dion perks up as well and levels the detector towards the bar. The voices are now loud enough to hear over Springsteen. “Sounds like the Subjects, but I can’t make out what’s—”

There’s a crash through the front door of the bar.

Subjects A and B stumble out into the street, with Subject A holding Subject B up by the shirt, almost off the ground. “ _You knew!_ ” he roars, loud enough for Dion to wince and adjust the headphones. “ _Ever since you fell to earth, you knew!_ ”

“Get your hands off me, brother—”

“ _You knew!_ ”

Well, this just got a lot more exciting. Hakim reaches for the radio. “Base, we’ve got an incident with the subjects taking place.”

It takes a few seconds, but then the radio crackles back: “ _What sort of incident?_ ”

Subject B twists out of Subject A’s grip, whirls around, and cracks him in the jaw with his elbow.

Dion whistles.

“The kind with bruises,” says Hakim.

“ _Understood. Do not engage unless there is deadly force._ ”

“Copy that, Base.” Hakim clicks the radio off.

“Define deadly force,” mutters Dion, and the two agents watch Subjects A and B fight, shouting accusations all the while. They’re good. _Really_ good. “Think we better sit this one out, Addy.”

Hakim nods.

“And what good would it do?” Subject B ducks under Subject A’s punch just before it breaks his nose. “What is your plan of battle, Thor? Do you intend to bash your way back home?”

“Mjolnir is _mine_! How could you have betrayed me in this way? If I could retrieve _your_ power, I would have done so without regard to life or limb!”

“But you _don’t_ know of a way! If I am without my magic, what right have you to your hammer?”

Subject A doesn’t miss with the next swing. Subject B hits the ground. “It is a trick too far, Loki!”

“What trick? _What trick is it,_ that you should have to be my equal for _once_ in our lives?” Subject B spits a mouthful of blood onto the concrete. “The great Thor — what are you, without Mjolnir in your hand? A witless oaf, nothing more!”

“And what are _you_ without your infantile pranks? A frightened child, reaching beneath a woman’s skirts for comfort!”

Subject B snarls and grabs a broken bottle from the gutter.

“Oh, shit,” says Dion, reaching for his gun.

Thankfully — because Hakim and Dion _really_ do not want to get into this — the scientist and the intern stride out of the bar at that moment.

The intern holds two pitchers — one in each hand — and, without so much as a warning, tosses them at Subjects A and B, soaking them from head to toe in what looks like Budweiser.

Subjects A and B stop what they’re doing and sputter.

The scientist turns to the intern, gaping. The intern just shrugs. “Left my taser at home,” she says.

Agents Dion and Hakim radio in shortly afterwards that the incident has been averted, but Subject A and the scientist appear to be heading towards Base. Which means Base is going to get to have all the fun _again_. Then there’s nothing to do but watch the remaining two go back to the lab, where the intern plays with her phone and Subject B glowers into space.

So much for things getting interesting.

Hakim loses the game at a koala to Kansas City.

 

 


	7. Wherein Darcy and Loki launch a rescue.

**tinyscribblequeenfromspace asked you: Well, since you left them in the same room…it would be pretty sweet/disastrous/hilarious to see Loki and Darcy discuss Thor and Jane.**

_Wherein Darcy and Loki launch a rescue. (Romance/Humor. G.)  
_

 

 

***

  
  
Loki hates the Eye-Phone, but he listens to Jane Foster’s recorded voice for the fifth time nevertheless.

 _“Hi, Darcy. It’s me. Don’t worry, I’m fine. But just in case you don’t hear from me in the next hour—”_ and here there is a brief burst of what Darcy Lewis identified as ‘gunfire’ _“—come by the crater site and try to find us, okay? It’s gone about as well as Loki predicted. Don’t tell him I said that. Okay. Bye.”_

It’s a very strange feeling, to not enjoy being having been right.

The car — another thing Loki hates — jolts uncomfortably as Darcy Lewis races down the muddy road. The lights attached to the front of the vehicle only illuminate a few yards through the rain, making it difficult to avoid uneven bumps and holes. “They’re going to be fine,” she says. “Quit worrying.”

“I am not worried.”

“You’re fidgeting so much that you’re starting to make me jumpy. If I’d known you were going to be like this I’d have left you at home.”

“That’s absurd. The responsibility for this situation is mine, and thus it is my responsibility to rectify. _You_ should have remained behind.”

“Like I was going to let you drive.” Darcy Lewis shrugs. “And it’s not _that_ much your fault. The only way to stop Jane from going would have been to hog-tie her in the bathroom.”

Loki is silent.

“And _no_ , you’re not allowed to do that.”

“Morality must sometimes yield in the wake of solvent courses of action.”

“I would have tased you.”

“That wretched weapon of yours ought to be destroyed.”

“Be glad I stopped carrying mace. And aren’t you wondering at least a  _little_ bit about Thor? I mean, he _is_ your brother, and he seemed really upset about Mew-Mew.”

Loki flexes his hand instinctively. The one that had turned to ice. If they hadn’t been banished, if he’d had time to ask Father — or Mother, it would have been better to speak to Mother — and discover the truth of it all, perhaps, perhaps… “My brother—” is he really “—will have to rescue  _himself_ from the consequences of his actions.”

“Yeah, I don’t think he’s so good at that.”

“Well, it’s long past time he learned.”

“Then _I’ll_ help him.” Darcy Lewis shakes her head. “I like how you’ve loosened Jane up and all, but you can be a real jerk sometimes.”

“And you are an irritating little creature who hasn’t the slightest notion of when it is appropriate to remain silent.”

“Since you’re freaking out I’m going to let that one slide.”

“I am _not_ freaking out.”

“You _so_ are. And she’s going to forgive you, you know.”

“I’ve done nothing that requires forgiveness.” Which is exactly what Loki said to Jane before she stormed off into the night with Thor. Just after she accused him of hiding vital scientific evidence from her because of some ‘ridiculous family thing’ and then waited expectantly for an apology.

He only told her that recklessness and stupidity followed his brother wherever he went, and she would be equally reckless and stupid to accompany him on his quest.

She went anyway.

The situation may be his responsibility — what with having too many of that poison Darcy Lewis refers to as _Jäger_ and bringing up the subject of Mjolnir at all — but he has no intention of apologizing.

What right has Thor, after all? Favored _again_ by Odin, even in exile. Loki has tried for weeks to discover some method by which to recover his magic, _any_ of his magic, even just enough to create an illusion of Asgard’s constellations for Jane Foster to examine. But there is _nothing_. Only science. Science is not magic, whatever she says. There are bridges all over the realms, ones only he has ever discovered, including ones here on Midgard, but without his powers he cannot find them, let alone use them.

And yet there is Mjolnir, just sitting in the desert, waiting for Thor to pick it up and return to all his glory.

Loki had even tried to lift it himself. It wasn’t the first time he’d attempted such a thing, after all. But that first night, lost and powerless and hoarse from shouting for Heimdall, for Mother, for Thor, when he stumbled across his brother’s weapon in the middle of a crater, gleaming in the moonlight… it had seemed worth a try.

Of course Mjolnir hadn’t budged. It never did.

So he’d walked, his human form — a human form, the final insult — growing weak and weary, until at daylight he’d stumbled into a little village and found his brother, hale and whole, sitting in a tavern with a group of mortals.

Thor had leapt to his feet and embraced Loki as he hadn’t since they were youths fighting their very first wars. _Brother_ , he’d said. _Thank the heavens._

Loki had never been so glad to see anyone in his life.

But he’d told no one of the hammer.

Not when for once, just this once, they were equals.

And if that meant Jane Foster did not have access to something that could have perhaps aided her research, well, so be it. Everyone must suffer disappointments. Even her.

He’s done _nothing wrong_.

“I’ve done nothing wrong,” he says aloud.

Darcy Lewis snorts. “Well, if you’re not going to grovel,” she says, “then you better find another way to _make it up to her_. But the people across the street are going to start complaining before too much longer, just so you know.”

Loki has picked up enough of modern turns of phrase to understand Darcy Lewis is making a suggestive comment, but the latter bit is confusing. “I don’t understand. Why would they complain?”

“Because you're _noisy_ and not everyone’s got headphones. They don’t want to know about what you two are doing all hours of the day.”

“The sound of copulation... offends Midgardians?”

“Oh, yeah. Around here, anyway. It all comes back to the Puritan founders. Long story, but a pretty cool one, and if you promise not to be an ass about it I’ll explain when we get back.”

This was not the way of things last time they visited. What a difference a mere thousand years can make. “Why did Jane not tell me?”

“You’ll have to ask her, but if it were _me_ getting nailed like that, I wouldn’t rock the boat.”

Idioms.

Loki presses the Eye-Phone again. _“Hi, Darcy. It’s me. Don’t worry, I’m fine…”_  
  
  
***  
  
  
The rain has stopped by the time they arrive.

It would seem the black battalion has _also_ discovered the location of the hammer. Loki had thought that persuading them to leave Jane Foster be had been a bit too easy, even for him. Something to consider for the future. “My brother is in there,” he says, nodding towards the small white village and the path of destruction heading towards it. The signs of Thor’s battles are always unmistakable. “They must have captured him before he reached Mjolnir.”

“How do you know?”

“The village is still standing.”

“Are you _really_ not going to help him?”

Loki says nothing. There are two people here in need of aid, but only one deserves it.

Darcy Lewis waits for a moment, then rolls her eyes. “Fine.” She strips off her outerwear, revealing a tight shirt and — beneath it — a truly impressive figure. When she catches Loki staring, she only shrugs. “Never hurts. Wish me luck.”

That’s asking a little too much, but Loki does nod.

Thor is chivalrous. He would never have allowed mortal Jane Foster to follow him into battle. So Loki circles the edge of the white village, along the least impressive battlements he’s ever seen — they have _holes_ , for heavens’ sake — until he comes across a lowly, prickly scrub, and feet sticking out from beneath.

“Hello, Jane Foster,” he says. “Your talent for concealment leaves something to be desired.”

She squirms out, soaking wet and covered in mud. “Where’s Darcy?” she demands.

“Attempting to rescue my idiot of a brother. But please, don’t overwhelm me with your gratitude.”

“I— right. Sorry. I just didn’t expect to see you, is all.” Jane Foster rises awkwardly to her feet. At this moment she looks very, very mortal — and very, very frightened. “I’m… glad you’re here.”

It’s ridiculously sentimental, given that there is nothing between them but physical gratification and mutual interest in reopening the Bifrost. But Loki pulls her close all the same. “I apologize,” he hears himself say, “for my ill-chosen words.”

He still doesn’t regret lying about Mjolnir, but one does not speak to one’s lover as he did. It was beneath him. And beneath her.

Jane Foster wraps her arms around his waist. “That’s the best I’m going to get, isn’t it,” she says, voice muffled against his chest.

“Yes.”

“Okay. Then I’m sorry I called you a pretentious jackass.”

He blinks. “I don’t recall that.”

“It was in the van on the way here.”

“I see.”

“But you still shouldn’t have hidden all that research potential.”

“We’ll agree to disagree,” he says, then presses a kiss to the side of her neck, because there are few things as soothing as Jane Foster’s embrace, and because he is growing as foolish as Thor.  
  
  
***  
  
  
Darcy Lewis manages to talk Thor free with tales of drunken wagers and something called ‘steroids’. Loki distrusts the look in the Son of Coul’s eye, but sometimes victory is in a strategic retreat.

Thor is so listless as they walk away from the white village that Loki pulls him aside. “We will try again,” he says, because maybe Jane Foster is right. Mjolnir will not get them out of the realm on its own, but if there is information to be gleaned from it and added to her science—

“It matters not. I could not lift it.”

Loki frowns. “What?”

“I reached my hammer, brother. It was in my hand, and I could not lift it.” Thor looks up, and Loki has never seen him so helpless. “ _I could not lift it._ What are we to do?”

Perhaps Odin did not favor his eldest son after all.

Loki hasn't felt so much Thor's equal in their lives.

Another feeling he is not enjoying as much as he expected.

“We will think of something,” he says.

After a moment, Thor nods. And claps him on the shoulder.

It is Darcy Lewis who drives Thor home, and Loki who rides in the van with Jane. He is asleep before they have travelled more than two miles; when they arrive back in town he sleeps in her trailer once more, in spite of the aches and soreness the tiny bed causes the next morning.

Mortal forms are far, far too weak.


	8. Wherein Thor gets eternal blackmail material.

 

**Kurukami says: Darcy introduces Loki to boilermakers in an attempt to cheer him up. *sly grin* This ~~maybe could~~ undoubtedly will end with hilarity. Bonus points for Loki on-the-spot drunkenly inventing a parallel to Asgardian mead out of the ingredients to be found in a small-town New Mexico bar. ;)**

 

_Wherein Thor gets eternal blackmail material. (Romance/Humor/Fluff. PG-13.)_

_I think Loki and Thor could handle beer-based drinks, even with whiskey. Liqueurs, though…  *evil laughter*_

 

  
***  
  
  
Thor rather enjoys sleeping out of doors. It makes him think of the glorious battles in Nornheim, when he and Loki and Sif and the Warriors Three trekked across the realm to face a hundred warriors in combat. The journey was long and dangerous, but there is nothing, nothing as invigorating as the anticipation of war. And the stars lit their way.

Besides, aside from a single rainstorm, the weather in this land of New Mexico has been clear and calm. And these lawn chairs are more comfortable than rocks.

He is nearly asleep — mortal forms require so much maintenance — when he hears the sound of footsteps along the laboratory roof. “Oh,” says Jane Foster. “Oops. I thought you were out with Darcy and Loki.”

“I chose not to accompany them. The last outing led to the most uncomfortable state of… what do Midgardians call it, again?”

Jane Foster shakes her head as she sits in the opposite chair. “A hangover.”

“Yes. I’ve suffered battle wounds less painful. How do you stand it?”

“By drinking less.”

“You speak nonsense.”

“Okay, seriously, you and Loki have got to take better care of yourselves. I don’t know what things were like on the other side of the bridge, but human beings can’t live on coffee and alcohol and junk food.”

“Darcy Lewis says—”

“Darcy doesn’t know everything.”

Thor doubts that. Jane Foster is intelligent, but Darcy Lewis is wise. The former characteristic is useful. The latter is what keeps one alive in perilous circumstances.

These are deeply perilous circumstances.

“I’ll get Darcy to make a better shopping list,” says Jane Foster. “And then you need to work out some kind of reasonable schedule instead of just going until you literally collapse. And find more clothes. And a better place to sleep.” She leans back in the chair and looks up at the stars, much as Thor himself had been. “You… might be here awhile.”

He thinks of the feeling of Mjolnir in his hand, the _rightness_ of it, and then how it didn’t budge no matter how he pulled.

 _You are unworthy,_ Father had said.

It cannot be forever. It _cannot_. Perhaps he and Loki will spend more time on Midgard than either of them anticipated, but sooner or later they will find a way home. They will speak to Father. They will beg his forgiveness. They will make it right.

Somehow.

“You and Loki will solve this,” says Thor aloud. “You are clever, and there has never yet been a situation my brother could not think his way out of.”

“I hope so,” she says. “I mean, I’m going to do my best. Thanks, though, for the vote of confidence.”

Thor smiles at her. “You have been extremely kind to us, Jane Foster. I know my brother expresses his gratitude daily, but I should tell you, I consider it my great fortune to have been struck by your van. Twice.”

“Um… right.” Jane Foster sits up suddenly. “How long have they been gone, by the way?”

“It’s been some time.” Thor points to the sky. “The moon was there.”

“Oh, great.”  
  
  
***  
  
  
Thor has not forgiven Loki for his deception regarding Mjolnir. But in the face of their current difficulties, fighting with his brother seems worse than pointless.

And Loki _is_ still his brother, no matter what their disagreements. Jane Foster and Darcy Lewis are good company, but without Loki at his side, Thor does not know how long he could survive this exile without falling into despair. They have always been together. Even when at each others’ throats.

And that is how it will always be.

That being said, once they have returned to Asgard, _nothing_ will stop Thor from recounting this tale to _everyone_ they meet.

“What did you give him?” says Jane Foster, her face lit crimson by the lights of the town tavern.

Darcy Lewis shrugs. “Goldschlager.”

“Are you serious? How much?”

“I only had a couple. _Him_ , though… I kind of lost track.”

“You have got to be kidding.”

“Hey, I just wanted to see if there was something out there that would loosen him up. Other than sex, I mean. Aren’t you chafing by now?”

“Oh, my _God,_ please don’t ever say anything like that ever again.”

“What? I’m trying to help!”

Loki is slumped over a glass on the bar. When Thor pats his shoulder, he glances up, his eyes glassy and unfocused. “Midgardians have begun drinking gold,” he slurs.

“That’s rather impressive,” Thor concedes.

“So it is. Many things have changed, brother. Did you know the sound of sexual congress is now considered impolite?”

“It is? Since when?”

“Since the pur— purys—” Loki looks helplessly at Darcy Lewis. “What were they?”

“The Puritans,” says Darcy Lewis. “It started before them, actually, but as far as the cultural groundwork, those guys bear the most responsibility for what is considered a uniquely American restriction on the subject of sexuality.” Jane Foster stares at her, and she raises an eyebrow. “We _do_ learn things in the political science track, you know.”

This is all very strange. “Your ancestors did not think this way,” says Thor, bewildered. “Why would another’s pleasure be something to—”

“Because the rest of us could use some sleep,” says a man in a cap who sits several stools down.

“That’s Chester,” Darcy Lewis says, nodding to the man. “He lives across the street. See what I mean?”

“Right.” Jane Foster’s cheeks have turned even redder than the lights. “Mister, uh, Chester, I am very, _very_ sorry. It won’t happen again.”

“No big rush. Didn’t say there weren’t perks. I cancelled my HBO subscription and everything.”

A beat. “Okay,” Jane Foster says, “we’re leaving now.” She yanks Darcy Lewis off her chair by the arm, then grabs Loki and attempts to do the same.

Loki responds by pulling Jane Foster onto his lap. “You are very lovely,” he tells her, nuzzling into her neck as his hand creeps down her backside. “For a mortal.”

Thor has never seen anyone roll her eyes as hard as Jane Foster does in that moment, not even Sif. “Yes, thank you, Loki. Time for bed.”

“What a superb idea.” Loki attempts to stand and simultaneously keep his lover in his embrace. Thor catches him before he hits the floor.

Darcy Lewis turns to Jane Foster. “Can you pay the tab? I forgot my wallet.”

“Typical. This is _so_ typical.”

“I am reminded of Alfheim, brother,” Loki says to Thor. “Do you remember Alfheim?”

“It would be difficult to forget Alfheim.”

“Indeed.” A pause. “Are we on Alfheim?”

“No. We are on Midgard.”

Loki curses. Creatively. “But I don’t _want_ to be on Midgard.”

“Nor do I, brother, but it is the way of things.”

“I want to go home.”

“I know.”

“I want my magic.”

“I know.”

“I want Jane Foster.” Loki has found his feet, but only just; he tries to turn around, stumbles, and nearly falls before Thor catches him again. “Where has she gone?”

Thor cannot _wait_ to tell the Warriors Three of this. “Just there,” he says, motioning to where the woman in question is handing a plastic card to the serving wench and glaring at Darcy Lewis. “See? Not far.”

“Ah.” Loki pulls away and, to Thor’s rather significant surprise, manages to make all ten steps without walking into anything — though Jane Foster staggers a bit under his weight when he wraps his arms around her from behind. “I’ve decided to keep you,” he announces. “When we return to Asgard you will accompany us as my consort.”

Jane Foster hits her forehead with her palm. “You are banned from drinking,” she informs him. “Indefinitely.”

“This is a very high honor.”

“I mean it, Loki.”

“You should be expressing gratitude.” He looks over at Thor, his focus glazed. “Was I unclear? Explain it to her, brother.”

Thor is laughing too hard to respond.

“Don’t ever serve them again,” Jane Foster tells the wench. “Not any of them.” She points at Darcy Lewis. “Not even her.”

“Hey!”

“This is my bar, porn-girl,” says the serving wench. “Only I get to ban people, and as long as they pay, I don’t give a fuck how batshit crazy they are.”

Jane Foster looks like she wants to say more, but Loki’s hands are making their way under her shirt, and more than one villager has turned to stare. For a culture that claims to be offended by sexual congress, they certainly seem very interested in it. “Not here,” she says to Loki, flushing. “The trailer’s only about two hundred yards away.  _Not here_.”

“How absurd you mortals have become,” Loki says, but Jane Foster manages to get him out the front door without anyone suffering significant injury.

Someone whistles.

“This,” Thor says to Darcy Lewis, “may be the greatest night of my life.”

“And the best part is, we can relive it forever.” She holds up the Eye-Phone and grins. “Already up to three thousand hits on YouTube.”

Thor has no idea what that means, but it sounds marvelous.

Sometimes Midgard really isn’t that bad.

 

 


	9. Wherein Loki and Jane disagree about both astrophysics and exhibitionism.

 

 

**sarahsmoores asked you: Intense philosophical conversations/arguments between Jane and Loki during late night sessions in the lab, maybe to do with Loki's struggle to understand mortals (that may or may not lead to sexy times *cough*)**

 

_Wherein Loki and Jane disagree about both astrophysics and exhibitionism. (PWP. NC-17.)_

 

 

“It’s not that difficult to understand,” Jane tells Loki for what is, at this point, at least the tenth time. “Clearly an Einstein-Rosen bridge is traversable, since you’re here—”

“Astounding conclusion on your part.”

“—but there’s no logic, _none_ , to the hypothesis that a wormhole like that can be created and collapsed on command.”

“Except for the part where that is precisely what happens.”

“But that’s what I’m telling you. It can’t be. I can understand how you might make that mistake—”

_“Mistake?”_

“—because it _does_ make sense that the connection might migrate with the rotation of the planets, even the galaxy. Well, not migrate _exactly_ , but what is for all intents and purposes stationary at a cosmic level could be such a substantial shift here at _our_ level that it might _seem_ as though it is disappearing and reappearing. After all, you and Thor departed—”

“We were banished.”

“—at almost precisely the same moment, and from the same exit point, but you wound up miles apart.” Jane motions to the topographical map spread out on the table; pins mark the locations of Puente Antiguo and the respective landing points of Thor, Loki, and Mjolnir. “Evidence doesn’t lie. And if the wormhole could move so much — to our eyes, at least — in only a few seconds, then it could be nearly anywhere by now.”

“ _Or_ the Bifrost opens and closes at Heimdall and the All-Father’s will, and the fact that Thor and I fell in different spots is simply because Odin felt spiteful.”

“An Einstein-Rosen bridge is not influenced _spite_.”

“Oh? And out of the two of us, which one has actually _traveled_ across this bridge?”

Jane wishes she were as strong as Thor, because if she were she would shake Loki until his teeth rattled. Not because of the way he lords his greater experience over her — though he does. No, she’d do it out of sheer, raw jealousy. She’s self-aware enough to realize that.

But she won’t have to be jealous for long. When they find the bridge, she’s going to travel it too. As many times as possible. With as much observational equipment as she can carry.

There’s a whole _universe_ out there to study.

“I thought you’d be happy,” Jane says. “Since the bridge never closes, it’s only a matter of finding it again.” She elects not to tell him she has no idea how long that will take. “We just have to collect more data. I was able to predict the last several events. Sooner or later we’ll find another one.”

“And while we collect your _data_ , we will be wasting time better spent uncovering a method by which to force the Bifrost gate to reopen.” Loki scowls down at the map. “We have neither Gungnir nor Hofund. Thor is torn from his hammer, and I…”

His fingers flex.

Jane doesn’t understand the nature of these artifacts Thor and Loki are always talking about, but that’s because she hasn’t had a chance to analyze them. And whatever Loki used to do… she’d like to analyze that just as much. Probably his ‘tricks’ were connected to the armor he lost in Asgard and he never realized it. Kind of like Tony Stark’s Iron Man suit.

She knows better than to suggest anything like that, though. There’s no quicker way to send Loki into a bad mood, and when he’s sulking she loses the best assistant she’s ever had.

“Okay,” she says. “Assuming you’re right — and this is only for the sake of argument, mind — is there any way  _other_ than the bridge that you’ve traveled?”

“Oh, yes. There are secret paths between the worlds to which even Heimdall, with all his gifts, is blind.”

“To Earth?”

“Indeed.”

“Then we should be looking for _those_ , too.”

Wrong thing to say. Loki turns on her with a snarl. “Do you think me a fool, that such a notion has not entered my mind, Jane Foster? The Bifrost can be influenced by relics, but these paths require _magic_ to cross. I cannot use them as I am now, so there is no _point_ in seeking them out! It would only be yet _more_ wasted time!”

She wanted to shake him a minute ago; now it looks like he might do the same to her.

It’s been a long night.

Come to think of it, it’s probably been a _very_ long night. Jane glances up at the wall clock — yep. Two-thirty. “Look, we’re both fried,” she says. “Tomorrow we’ll start with the particle data and—”

His mouth is on hers, and that makes it kind of hard to talk.

Which is a really manipulative way to shut her up.

And she’d complain — seriously, she would — but it _has_ been almost a full day.

As Jane grabs hold of Loki’s hair and gives as good as she gets, it occurs to her that there’s no real justification for the way they’ve been acting. Teenagers might have sex at literally every opportunity, but she’s a full-fledged adult, and Loki is— okay, she doesn’t want to think about how old he might be. Well past the age of behaving like _this_. They’ve got no excuse.

On the other hand — specifically, the hand that just unsnapped her bra — who cares.

Loki hoists her up to sit on the edge of the table, which alleviates the height difference problem, then somehow manages to strip her naked from the waist up in about three seconds. “Are you a ninja or something?” she asks, just before his tongue starts to lave at her collarbone and she loses all power of speech.

“I don’t know what a ninja is,” he replies, working a hot path along her shoulder. He’s been paying a _lot_ of attention to what she likes… a theory confirmed by the way he palms one breast with exactly the right pressure to make her arch into his touch. She can feel him smile against her skin as she gasps for breath. “More,” he says. “Louder.”

Always _louder_ with Loki. He’s _determined_ not to understand how basic manners work here on ‘Midgard’. “It’s impolite,” she tells him — okay, whimpers.

“Your conventions are ridiculous.”

“Half the town has been listening.”

“To their privilege.”

“We have—” she chokes a little as his lips find the spot just behind her earlobe “—we have _floor to ceiling windows_.”

“We’ve no windows at all in Asgard. And few doors.”

“But that — _oh_ — that’s on Asgard. Here—”

“Why must you be so easily distracted by these insignificant concerns?” His roaming hands pause. “Am I not pleasing you?”

It took Jane a while to see that it’s Loki’s ego she strokes more than — um — other things, but once she caught on she felt really stupid for not getting it earlier. She should probably care more than she does that this is about a borderline megalomaniac’s inferiority complex. In a weird way, she’s kind of taking advantage of him.

Then again, she’s given up anything that even remotely resembles respectability in Puente Antiguo. Maybe the whole state of New Mexico. So it’s not like she hasn’t made sacrifices of her own.

“I could be more pleased,” she says, unbuttoning his collar.

Loki searches her expression for a moment, then smiles as he sheds his suit jacket. Thor accepted t-shirts and jeans immediately; Loki’s sole concession to it being the middle of the night is that he’s taken off his tie. He’d probably wear armor if he could.

She helps him out of his clothes as best she can, given that he’s started kissing her again. With purpose.

This is going to be good.

All right, the windows don’t matter so much.

Jane has seen Thor nearly naked, and it was… ah… _something_. Loki’s build is different, but no less impressive. They can really make them on the other side of the Einstein-Rosen bridge.

While she is distracted, Loki manages to get her sweatpants to her ankles. Formality isn’t her thing as much as it is his. “Come now,” he murmurs, lifting her down and turning her around to bend over the table. “What do you want, Jane Foster? You need only ask.”

She can’t think straight to request anything specific. She just says his name.

That’s more than enough for him, apparently.

And, yes, soon the lips on her throat coax her from moans to cries, and the fingers between her legs coax her from cries to wails, and the hard deep driving movements in and out coax her from wails to shrieks. And, pressing closer and closer until she’s sandwiched between the map of the county and his hotter-than-the-desert chest, he’s really not any quieter. Just lower-pitched.

It’s not only _his_ ego getting stroked.

When they're finished he pulls away, raining kisses along her back as he goes — which is how he gets, after — and Jane glances around, sighing. “We didn’t even turn the lights off,” she grumbles. “Anyone who looked saw that.”

“It matters not.”

“ _You_ might think so, but _I’m_ the one who gets stared at in the laundromat.”

“Then send Darcy Lewis in your place. That’s what servants are for.”

“She’s not my servant.”

“Slave, then.”

“She’s _definitely_ not my slave!”

“Does she receive compensation for her labor?”

“Well, no, not exactly, but… she gets college credits. Those count.”

Loki just chuckles as he fastens his belt into place. Thor says he laughed plenty on Asgard, but here it’s a very rare thing, and usually only after they’ve had sex. “As you say, Jane Foster.”

Speaking of Thor, he’s probably awake on the roof. And Darcy’s bedroom — a converted storage closet — is only twenty feet away from where Jane is currently re-hooking her bra. They’ve _got_ to stop doing this.

But Loki’s starting to examine the map again, which is more than a little crinkled now. The tension is returning to his shoulders. “Do you know how much more I could manage,” he says, “if we were in Asgard?”

Jane snorts. “If you _managed_ any more,” she replies, “I wouldn’t be able to walk.”

He looks over at her — and grins.

It’s a nice grin.

Yeah, it’s going to keep happening.

Except, maybe, in the future, they’ll at _least_ stay away from the windows.

 

 

 


	10. Wherein Loki and Jane get spied on. A lot.

 

 

**iamartemisday asked you: Loki and Jane go out on their first proper date. Darcy and Thor 'secretly' tag along to make sure it goes well. Awkwardness ensues.**

 

_Wherein Loki and Jane get spied on. A lot. (Humor/Borderline crack. PG.)_

_This is the most ridiculous thing I've written in at least three years._

 

 

 

 

“Is it alive?”

“No. Nineteen.”

“ _Was_ it alive?”

“No. Eighteen.”

“Is it smaller than a breadbox?”

“Yes. Seventeen.”

“Is it something a person could reasonably expect to see on a daily basis?”

“No. Sixteen.”

“Oh, come _on_. We agreed on _common_ objects.”

“I never said it was _un_ common. Just that it wasn’t something you could expect to see daily.”

“That’s what uncommon means.”

“That is _not_ what uncommon means. You don’t see _rain_ every day, but you wouldn’t call _that_ uncommon, would you?”

“Is it rain?”

“No. Fifteen.”

Agent Hakim adjusts her sunglasses. High noon in New Mexico is hell on the eyes. “Three more days on this detail,” she says to Agent Dion, “and I’m going to shoot you.”

“Three more days on this detail,” says Agent Dion, “and I’m going to shoot _myself_. Base’ll want a report in the next few minutes.”

“Fine. Tell them Subject A and the intern have been mixing Slurpees at the 7-11 for the last hour. And details on the scientist and Subject B cost ninety-nine cents a minute.”

Dion shakes his head. “The Slurpee thing sounds good. You want one?”

Hakim focuses her binoculars to get a better view through the convenience store windows. “I think they’ve got blueberry,” she says after a moment. “If they do, get me a large. But none of that cherry crap.”

“You have something against cherries now?”

“ _Real_ cherries, no. Cherry- _flavor_ , on the other hand— hey, wait. Subject B and the scientist are on the move.”

“They usually are.”

“No, I mean, they’ve actually left the laboratory. In daylight. Together.”

“No shit?” Dion sits up to peer over the edge of the roof. “Huh. They never come out unless the intern is dragging them. Think it means something?”

“Hell if I know,” says Hakim, passing Dion the extra set of binoculars. “But it’s more interesting than your stupid-ass guessing games.”

“You only think they’re stupid because you always lose.”

“Shut up.”

 

***

 

“And this one,” announces Darcy, “is Mountain Dew.”

Thor blinks. “What sort of harm befell your Midgardian mountains,” he says, “that could turn the waters to such a _green?”_

“It’s not _real_ dew. It’s just a name. You’ll like it.”

“I recall you spoke similarly of the Apple Schnapps.”

“But it was good, right?”

“It tasted nothing of apple.”

“That’s not the point.” Darcy starts filling up another Big Gulp cup with Dew Slurpee. They’re starting to get dark glares from the guy behind the counter, but she’s got twenty dollars in her pocket and that’ll cover everything they’ve had already, plus some Snickers on the way out. No big deal.

Okay, so this probably isn’t _exactly_ what Jane meant when she asked Darcy to go grocery shopping. But apparently they’ve got fruits and vegetables and lean chicken breasts on Thor’s planet. They don’t have Slurpees or Snickers. Who’s going to teach him about those, if not Darcy? This is _vital_ stuff.

“When we return to Asgard,” says Thor, watching the Slurpee mixer churn with a seriously skeptical look, “it is _I_ who will introduce _you_ to the succulent delights of another world. Piquant dishes from the most distant realms, meads with a hundred flavors — wonders the likes of which even you, Darcy Lewis, have never conceived.”

“Sounds cool,” says Darcy. She passes him the Slurpee. “Don’t drink so fast this time.”

“You _are_ going to pay for that,” says the guy behind the counter.

“Yeah, yeah, don’t worry.” Darcy glances out the window as Thor starts to slurp — and, hey, wait. “Is that… Jane and Loki?”

Thor looks up and follows her gaze out the window. “It is,” he says after a moment, sounding stunned. “They have left the laboratory.”

Loki and Darcy’s — supervisor? Is that what Jane is? It’s probably on a form somewhere — are walking down the street and talking to each other like… like they’re _normal people_.

What the hell is going on?

“Quick,” Darcy says to Thor, heading for the exit. “We’re following them.”

“My brother does not require supervision with his consort.”

“Oh, like they’ve ever cared about _supervision_.” Thor gasps and grabs for his head, and Darcy rolls her eyes. “I _told_ you not to drink too fast.”

“What is this pain? Another hangover?”

“It’s called a brain freeze. Hurry up, or we’re going to lose them.”

 

***

 

Heimdall’s watch is never-ending. He has witnessed the greatest of ecstasies, the deepest of pains, the most brutal cruelties known to living creatures. There is nothing that he does not see. There is nothing that he _cannot_ see.

But for now, for this heartbeat of time, his watch is focused on but two lives. For this is what the ruler of Asgard has ordered.

If the Queen commands, the Gatekeeper of the Bifrost obeys.

(As Frigga commands, so Heimdall obeys.)

For now, he guards that which is most precious to Frigga in all the realms: her sons, one of her body, one of Jotunheim (for Heimdall was watching the day the All-Father took Laufey’s son from the temple, watching as Odin laid the baby in the Queen’s arms, always watching, for this is his glory and his curse). If the Princes of the Realm Eternal come to peril, Heimdall will sound for aid. If aid does not come quickly enough, the never-ending vigil will end, and the Queen’s children will be saved.

If the Queen wishes, the Gatekeeper will leave his gate.

(As Frigga wishes, so Heimdall obeys.)

But _peril_ has many definitions, many interpretations to many beings. There is peril for the Princes on Midgard, but not the sort for which Heimdall is meant to intervene. He has watched the Aesir prince grow easier; he has watched the Jotun prince grow softer. There is good in this, but yes, there is danger as well. There is danger in growing to need that which they must one day lose.

The Queen’s younger son walks a Midgard street with his mortal lover, and he smiles.

The Queen’s elder son creeps a Midgard alley with his mortal friend, and he smiles.

If Heimdall were the one to define such things, he would define this as peril. But he is not. Heimdall does not define, he does not decide, he does not desire; that burden belongs to others. The Queen has made it clear she does not consider these smiles to be of concern.

If the Queen declares, the Gatekeeper will accept it as law.

(As Frigga declares, so Heimdall obeys.)

And thus does Heimdall watch.

 

***

 

Chester leans out his window as the free-porn people pass by his house. This could be even better than the roof thing.

 

***

 

After another hundred yards, Loki can feign ignorance no longer. “Brother,” he says aloud, coming to a stop on the pathway, “have we not long established that scouting is best left to _my_ purview?”

From the alley there is an Asgardian curse, and then Darcy Lewis’s: “Oh, shit.”

Jane Foster wheels about. “Huh? What’s going on?”

“We’re being observed,” Loki informs her. “From several fronts, actually.”

She blinks, then — for reasons he does not understand, since he’s not remotely at fault — smacks him on the chest. “Oh, my _God_. What did I tell you? _This_ is what I’ve been talking about!”

“I fail to see—”

“Of course you do! You and your windows!” Then Jane Foster steps out into the middle of the street. _“We’re going to get thumbtacks!”_ she shouts into the open air. _“And some more printer paper! That’s it! That’s all! Are you satisfied, you perverts?”_

Well.

Clearly Loki’s ministrations were inadequate the previous day, if his lover has fallen into such a irritable state so quickly.

That will have to be rectified.

 

***

 

“Someone didn’t get laid this morning,” Agent Hakim says to Agent Dion.

“Nope.”

 

***

 

Chester opens his windows a little wider. He can’t think of what they’re going to do with those thumbtacks, but he sure as hell doesn’t want to miss it.

Better turn off the radio, too.

 

***

 

Thor facepalms as Darcy pokes her head around the corner. “Dude,” she says, “take her back to bed, will you?”

 _“Darcy!_ You— you’re— damn it, _why_ were there no other applicants for this position?”  
  
“Because you have great luck. Give me the cash, Thor and I will go shopping, you guys go be science-y sex addicts. It’s what we’re all best at.”  
  
“You won’t get paper, you’ll get Oreos and a copy of Skyrim, and that is _not—”_

But they’re interrupted by the guy from the 7-11 running down the sidewalk. “I knew it!” he yells. “I knew you would leave without paying! Fourteen dollars and fifty-six cents worth of Slurpees!”

“Oops,” says Darcy.

 

***

 

Heimdall’s impassive watch continues.

Peril.

 

 

 


	11. Wherein the Princes of Asgard pay for all that royal privilege and Audrey answers another of her own prompts.

 

 

**audreyii_fic: i want to write some SOAP OPERATIC TROPES because REASONS**

 

 _Wherein the Princes of Asgard pay for all that royal privilege and Audrey answers another of her own prompts._ _(Humor. PG.)_

 

 

 

“Jane isn’t allowed to grocery shop anymore.” Darcy flips through her recipe app, shaking her head. “I can’t make dinner out of this.”

“What is that one?”

“Cauliflower. And we’re not eating it.”

Thor frowns. “Is it poisonous?”

“No, it’s disgusting.” She enters quinoa into the search engine, and the suggestions it kicks back aren’t even worth talking about. _“Jane!”_ she shouts from the kitchen — or what counts for a kitchen in this lab. “Jane, I’m pretty sure this is abuse!”

Jane doesn’t even look away from some new chart stuck to the corkboard. “We can’t live on Hot Pockets,” she calls back.

“Since when?”

“Since… since forever! We shouldn’t have been living on Hot Pockets before, either!”

Darcy sets down her phone. “Jane,” she says, “I will give you _ten dollars_ —” no she won’t, she doesn’t have ten dollars “—if you can tell me what I’m supposed to cook with _wheat germ_.”

The seconds tick by.

“You just bought totally random stuff from that organic market, didn’t you.”

“No!”

“Knew it. Are you worried about getting fat or something? ‘Cause you look good. Probably all the orgasms. Thor, tell Jane she’s not getting fat.”

Thor’s still reading the back of the Kashi Indigo Morning Corn Cereal box. “How does one freeze-dry a blueberry,” he asks, “and, furthermore, _why_ would one freeze-dry a blueberry?”

Loki, who’s asleep on the couch even though it’s four in the afternoon — according to Jane it’s because he can’t get his circadian-or-whatever rhythms right, whereas anyone with experience in _reality_ can see the poor guy’s just worn out from sex and angst — mumbles something that sounds like _Shut up_ and pulls a pillow over his head.

Honestly, without her, they’d all be like lost kittens in the rain. “Give me the card,” says Darcy, reaching for her coat. “I’ll grab some Burger King.”

“There’s nothing _left_ on the card. Money doesn’t just fall out of the sky like—”

“Like Norse gods?”

“—yes. Thank you. No. Wait.”

Darcy turns to Thor. “How many burgers y’want?”

“Seven,” replies Thor.

“Didn’t you just hear the part where I said we’re _not_ getting fast food?”

“Yep, I did. Loki?”

“Five,” comes a muffled voice from beneath the pillow.

“ _I’m_ the one who has to justify our expenses to the grant team! How am I supposed to write up forty dollars from Burger King?”

“Probably more than forty. We’re gonna need fries, too.”

_“No!”_

“Greetings.” This last is Thor, speaking into Jane’s cell, which had begun to ring. “Yes, this is Jane Foster’s Eye-Phone.”

It’s an Android, but Darcy gives Thor a thumbs-up anyway. He’s getting so good at this!

Jane finally wanders away from the corkboard. “Who is it?”

“Ah. Yes. Who is this, that speaks to us from another Eye-Phone?”

Eh, close enough.

Thor waits for a moment, his usually happy-go-lucky expression turning — well — thunderous. “You will not speak to the Son of Odin in such a fashion, mortal,” he growls into the speaker.

Jane has to jump to snatch her Android from Thor’s hand. “Hi,” she says, bringing the phone to her ear, “sorry about that. My research assistant is a little, uh… never mind. Who is this?” Pause. “Oh. Um… hi.”

“You did good,” Darcy tells Thor. She raises her palm, and Thor looks at her blankly. “Oh, wait, didn’t I tell you about hi-fives yet?”

“I believe not.”

Yeesh. There is _so_ much to keep track of.

“Listen, I’m not sure that’s such a good idea.” Jane’s pacing by the window now, her expression strained. There’s another pause, then: “Yeah, Don, I _know_ it’s your stuff, but you can’t just— no, of course I haven’t thrown it out. I never throw _anything_ out.”

Oooh. “It’s the douchebag,” Darcy says to Thor. He frowns at her, and she clarifies: “Donald Blake. The guy whose pants you’re wearing.”

“Ah, yes, I recall. Jane Foster’s ‘ex’.”

“That’s the one.”

“What is an ‘ex’, precisely?”

“It’s short for ex-boyfriend. They used to live together.”

“As platonic companions, or in a romantic sense?”

“She’s still got a box of his clothes. Kinda speaks for itself, doesn’t it?”

Loki sits straight up on the couch. The pillow over his face falls to the floor with a soft _thump_.

“Oh, good,” Darcy says to him. “I was starting to think we’d have to pour the Coke over your head to get you going.”

Jane hangs up, closes her eyes, and smacks the Android against her forehead. “Great,” she says. “Great. This is exactly what I need right now.”

“Douchebag’s coming by?”

“Tomorrow, apparently.”

“I thought you said he dumped you, like, two years ago.”

“He did— I mean, it was mutual, really. Sort of. And he wants his old notes and books. Since he’s ‘in the area’.” Jane does the air-quotes and everything.

“There’s no such thing as ‘in the area’ of Puente Antiguo.”

“I know.”

“Shouldn’t have held onto his stuff.”

“I _know_.”

“This is a previous lover of yours?” For someone who was three-quarters asleep two minutes ago, Loki’s looking pretty scary.

Jane fiddles with her phone and pretends like she’s not blushing. “Sort of,” she mutters.

“Well, then, he will _not_ be ‘coming by’.”

“What?”

“This ‘Donald Blake’ will not be ‘coming by’ for his ‘stuff’, Jane Foster. You’re mine now. I won’t allow it.”

“Wait. Excuse me. _Allow_ it?”

“Was I unclear?”

Uh-oh. “C’mon,” Darcy mutters to Thor as Jane turns a really impressive shade of red. “Back door.”

“Very wise.”

Halfway to Burger King and they can _still_ hear the shouting. “What an idiot,” says Darcy.

“Indeed. Jane Foster is usually such an astute woman, too.”

“Yeah, that—” Darcy stops mid-step. Which also happens to be the middle of the street; a Toyota honks as it swerves by. “Hold up. _Jane?_ You think _Jane’s_ the one that’s wrong?”

“Of course. Jane Foster is the consort to a son of the All-Father. A Prince of the Realm Eternal. Obviously my brother would not permit her to meet with a former lover.” Thor spews that bullshit all nice and kind, like it’s the most obvious thing in the world. “She ought not have spoken with this Donald Blake at all, but Loki is very fond of her and will no doubt forgive her the transgression. We need not worry.”

Darcy just stares at him.

Another car swerves out of the way. A Chevy, this time. Thor frowns in confusion. “Are we not supposed to be obeying the laws of traffic?”

“You,” says Darcy, “don’t get any hamburgers.”

And she stalks away, leaving the douchebag standing on the median strip. _  
_

 

 


	12. Wherein most of New Mexico ‘ships Lokane.

 

**audreyii_fic: because there would be fallout from douchebaggery and also embrace ALL the tropes!**

 

 

_Wherein most of New Mexico ‘ships Lokane. (Humor. R.)_

 

 

 

There is no therapist in Puente Antiguo.

There _should_ be, mind. But there’s not. Not in a town with a population of two thousand, one hundred and twenty-five (give or take; about a thousand of those live out on ranches and reach civilization once in a blue moon). But this is worse, in a lot of ways. It’s twenty miles to the nearest Wal-Mart. It’s three long, dusty hours to Albuquerque. All two thousand, one hundred and twenty-five of them have got to live together without shooting each other.

There should really be a therapist.

Instead, there’s Fernanda. Better known as Fern. Or, apparently, ‘serving wench’.

If it wasn’t for the fact that the batshit brothers were the most interesting thing to happen to this place in about a decade — and possibly the best paying — she’d brain them with her baseball bat.

And, okay, it doesn’t hurt that they’re both easy on the eyes. Fern’s fifty-five, not dead.

“Another!” calls Thor, and Fern hurries to get him another Coors. He’s mostly stopped smashing his mugs on the ground, but without Darcy Lewis here to keep his ass in line, who knows what could happen. It’s just him and his brother, the local porn-celebrity, looking even moodier than usual.

Loki’s out of beer too, and Fern refills it without asking. They’re on their fourth pitcher but don’t seem to be worse the wear for it. Whereas Kalúha puts them both under the table.

Most fucked up thing ever.

Before she can walk away, Thor waves her closer. “You, wench,” he says, and Fern wonders where she left that baseball bat. “You are a woman of Midgard, are you not?”

They’re lucky they’re good-looking. “Last I checked, _rulacho_.”

“Excellent. Then perhaps you might explain where my brother has erred in his courtship.”

“There is no ‘courtship’,” mutters Loki. “And I’ve _not_ erred. It is Jane Foster who is in the wrong.”

“And yet somehow you have not been successful in making that clear to her. If your silver tongue has failed you—”

“Oh, _do_ shut up.”

“—then we must seek answers beyond ourselves.”

Loki snorts and takes a swallow of Coors. “Is that not why you associate with Darcy Lewis?”

“Ah.” Thor looks away. “Yes. Darcy Lewis seems also to be… displeased. It is a mystery.”

“There is no mystery, brother. Mortal women are simply irrational.”

Fern hates moments like this, where one half of her wants to find out what the hell is going on — she _is_ the town therapist, after all, she’s got a responsibility — and the other half wants to kick their asses. Both of them are in good shape, but the day Fernanda Guzman fails to throw a man out her front door is the day she burns her liquor license.

Curiosity wins out. “All right,” she says, leaning her elbow on the bar and propping her chin on her fist. “Tell Fern all about it.”

They do.

Holy hell, what _pendejos_. “You,” she says to Loki, “are never getting laid again.”

Someone yells “No!”; another person calls: “Fix it, Fern!”

“I _can’t_ fix it!” she shouts back. Honestly, she’ll be disappointed to lose all the free porn too, but there’s nothing to be done about such a fatal mistake. _Especially_ since they’re both still insisting it's not their fault. “This is too hardcore a fuck-up!”

The chorus of groans around the room says it all.

“More idioms,” Loki grumbles, reaching for a handful of peanuts from the community bowl. “What is this phrase, ‘getting laid’?”

“It refers to copulation,” Thor answers as Fern pinches her nose. “Or so says Darcy Lewis.”

“Ah, yes, the ever-wise Darcy Lewis. I’m certain she—” Loki breaks off, then looks up in what can only be described as alarm. “What? Never?”

“Never ever,” Fern assures him.

Another round of boos.

“But I’ve done _nothing wrong!_ I have every right to forbid my consort’s contact with a former lover! Your ancestors well understood such a basic— how can such an insignificant realm change so greatly in a single millennium?”

Fern hopes they’re not the kind of insane that’ll snap one day and blow up Main Street. “Okay, explain this ‘consort’ thing.”

Loki just rolls his eyes, so it’s Thor that fills her in. Sort of. According to him — after Fern pieces through the pompous language and generalized bullshit — it sounds like a consort is some kind of kept mistress-thing. “It is a lofty position,” Thor says, refilling his beer. “My brother has done Jane Foster a great honor.”

“Uh- _huh_. I’m sure you’re a fantastic sugar-daddy. But let me tell you a little secret about ladies: we _really_ don’t like being ordered around by dumbass neanderthals.”

They both stiffen at the insult. “You will speak with courtesy to the Princes of Asgard, wench,” growls Loki, glaring at her like she’s some kind of serf. “Mortals have lost their tongues for less disrespect.”

Fern reaches over the bar and smacks him on the side of the head.

“Ow!”

Thor stands so fast his stool falls over. “How dare you strike a son of—”

She smacks him too.

“Ow!”

One of the regulars turns away from the pool table. “You want your bat, Fern?” he calls.

“No, I got it. As for _you_ —” she points at the batshit brothers “—I don’t know where the fuck you think you’re from, and frankly, I don’t give a shit. But in _this_ town, when you tell a woman who she can and can’t talk to, you get an ass full of buckshot. And when you talk about losing tongues in my establishment, you get brained upside the skull and banned for the rest of your natural lives. _¿Comprenden?”_

They nod meekly.

“You boys got a place to sleep for the night?”

“The laboratory roof has not been forbidden to us,” says Thor.

“Good. Then you really only have one option: get over there, go to bed—” she turns to Loki “—and pray that Jane Foster’s ex is an even bigger asshole than  _you.”_

_“¡Y desgasta el petate!”_

“Can it, Manuel.”

Loki still looks sullen, but that’s better than mutinous. Thor, though— “And what am I to do about Darcy Lewis’s displeasure?”

“Get her some chocolate or something. And dodge the taser.”

Thor winces. But at least he has decent enough manners to take Fern’s hand — yeah, the one that smacked him — and kiss the back of it. “If our efforts are successful,” he says, “the bards will sing ageless songs of your wisdom.”

They are so full of shit. Good thing they’re charming. “Don’t think that’s getting you out of your tab.”

“Tab?”

“You have to _pay_ for all that beer.”

The brothers glance at each other. “We have not the card of currency,” says Thor.

Oh, for the love of—

“It’s on me.” Chester slaps down two twenties on the bar — probably money he saved from canceling his cable — then gives Loki a thumbs-up. “We’re all rooting for you, man.”

The whole bar cheers.

Fern pours herself a shot and seriously considers selling out and moving to Phoenix.

“I am most grateful,” Loki says acidly. “Come along, brother.”

Most of the talk after the batshit boys leave is of how Jane Foster’s ex-boyfriend can be run out of town as quickly as possible. The general consensus settles on waiting to see how _he_ feels about windows.

Two thousand, one hundred and twenty-five residents of Puente Antiguo, and  _no_ therapists.

Someone has _got_ to fucking do something.

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _Desgasta el petate_ is Mexican slang that means, more or less, to fuck until you wear out your mattress. Manuel is a direct sort of man.


	13. Wherein Donald Blake gets a surprisingly warm reception.

 

 

**audreyii_fic: and then obviously the donald thing has to be wrapped up because loki would still have something to say about that**

 

_Wherein Donald Blake gets a surprisingly warm reception. (Humor/Romance. PG-13.)_

 

 

 

Don feels a certain level of nostalgia as he drives into Puente Antiguo. How can he not? He spent the first third of his residency at the county hospital. He even actually _volunteered_ for the location, filled — at the time — with all sorts of naive ideas about being a small town doctor. Saving lives! Doing good!

Actually living in the boondocks cured him of _that_. Self-awareness is a virtue, and settling down fifty miles from a sushi place just wasn’t going to cut it. Isolation grated in a way he never imagined.

He would have begged for the transfer after only a few months, instead of holding out for a year, if it hadn’t been for Jane Foster.

Again. Naive.

The rental Mercedes has turned from cherry red to rust brown by the time Don pulls up to Jane’s laboratory. It hasn’t changed, except for how the roof’s faded a little lighter and that star-antenna has begun to list to the side.

It’s like stepping back in time.

Which makes it extra-surreal to knock on the glass like a stranger, like he didn’t live here for six months and make breakfast in that ugly little kitchen and sit on that raggedy couch late into the night, waiting for her to put down her charts and come to bed—

Jane’s not the one who answers the door.

“Hello.” The guy blocking Don’s way is tall — still shorter than him, but only by an inch or two, which is unusual in that Don is nearly always the tallest person in a room by half a head — and dressed in a suit and tie, even though it’s not even noon. He gives Don a once over, looking nonplussed. “May I be of some assistance?”

“Yes. I’m Donald Blake.”

The guy’s puzzled expression doesn’t change. He just raises an eyebrow.

Having to ask _permission_ to enter the lab. Yet another thing that doesn’t fit with his memories of this place. “I’m an old friend of Jane’s,” Don elaborates. “Didn’t she tell you I was coming?”

A small, polite smile is the response. “It must have slipped her mind,” the guy says, but he backs out of the way nonetheless and opens the door wider. “You’re welcome to wait, however.”

“She isn’t here?”

“I’m afraid not.”

Odd. Jane might forget things she considered unimportant, like dinner and sleep, but Don would never have called her flighty. Yeah, it was short notice, but he hadn’t known he’d be in Albuquerque for the conference until last week, and hadn’t decided to take an extra day to drive down until yesterday. Besides, it’s not like Jane ever _went_ anywhere.

Same old couch. Don flops down into his favorite cushion.

“Make yourself comfortable,” says the guy with another polite little smile. “May I offer you a drink?”

“Sure. Is there any coffee?”

“I could make a pot, if you wish. I’ve become quite proficient at it.”

“Then I’ll take some of that. Thanks.”

“Of course.”

Don watches the guy go through Jane’s cabinets with assurance. He knows his way around. “I didn’t get your name,” he says.

The guy introduces himself, but Don doesn’t quite catch it. “Luke?” he says.

The guy pauses in the act of loading coffee grounds into the machine. “If you’d like,” he says. “It hardly matters. I am Jane Foster’s research partner.”

“Her _partner?”_ Huh. She’d mentioned an assistant, but… “Never thought she’d let someone else touch her work.”

“She can certainly be quite... _passionate_ about it. But we’ve managed thus far.”

“I guess so.” Don smiles as Luke flips the switch and pulls a carton of cream out of the fridge. “She still drinks that Folgers crap, huh?”

“I’m sorry?”

“I know there’s no Starbucks around here, but it’s not like the ‘net doesn’t let you order decent beans.”

“The net— ah, yes. The Inter Net.”

“Yeah, there’s some sites that will set you up for the good Nicaraguan stuff. Not even that expensive. I could never convince her to do it, though.”

“Jane Foster can be surprisingly difficult to influence on certain subjects.”

“No kidding. Were you already in the states?” It’s kind of a non-sequitur, but Don’s used to small talk in an examining room, where distraction is a virtue. “Did you come all the way here just to work with Jane?”

“I’m a long way from home,” says Luke, “but the research opportunity fell into my lap, as the residents say.”

“Hey, it happens that way sometimes. What part of England are you from?” He can’t quite place the accent. “I spent some time in London during undergrad. Fun place. Lousy weather, though.”

Luke just tilts his head to the side and looks confused.

Okay, that’s fair. “Sorry,” says Don, raising his hands, “I’m not usually this rude, I swear. It’s just… you ever come back to a place you lived after a long time away?”

“No. But I suppose I’ll experience it in time.”

“Trust me, it’s a strange feeling.” He nods to where Luke has started pouring coffee into those old chipped mugs. “Seems like it should be me, doing that.”

“Does it.”

“Yeah. Kind of surreal. Jane was the first girl I ever lived with, so, you know. The instincts.”

He hums noncommittally. “Would you care for cream?”

“No, thanks.”

There’s something a little off about this guy. But then, there was always something a little off about Jane, too. That must be why she can stand to work with him.

Luke brings him a cup, then picks one of Jane’s rolling desk chairs to sit in. But _sit_ is actually the wrong word; he _lounges_ , legs spread and leaning on the armrest, like it’s a throne instead of some wobbly old thing she hauled in from IKEA a million years ago.

He’s awfully comfortable here. “How long have you been working with Jane?” asks Don, taking a sip of coffee. Ugh. Folgers.

“Four weeks, or so I’ve been told. I’ve no real intuition for the passage of time in this place.”

“No kidding. I was here for a year and it felt like ten.”

Luke just smiles again.

Don’s good with patients; it doesn’t always translate into reading social situations, but there’s something in the way Luke’s watching him that he doesn’t like. But, again, scientists can be awfully strange. “Did Jane say when she’d be back?” he asks, taking another swallow.

“She did not.”

“And she didn’t leave any boxes out or anything?” Picking up his stuff was just an excuse, of course. Don could care less about old textbooks and some cheap clothes. But he and Jane didn’t really end on the best terms — he’d assumed, of course, that she’d come with him after his residency transfer went through, since she’d only been here for eight months herself, but her research grant was tied to this location and she wouldn’t even _consider_ a different location — and he wanted to see her again. Repair the friendship a little. See if she’d finally gotten sick of New Mexico.

Never hurts to check.

“No, no boxes,” says Luke. “But I’m certain that if you—”

The front doors burst open. “Loki, the card of currency was rejected,” says a guy who even _bigger_ than Don — which is kind of unnerving. Also, didn’t he used to have jeans like that? “How am I to acquire chocolate without a method of payment?”

Luke — Loki? — rolls his eyes. “Have you considered simply taking it?”

“That is not permitted. If you actually _listened_ to Darcy Lewis, brother, you would know the laws and regulations of this realm by now.”

“I know them. I just fail to see how they are relevant to _us_. And since when have _you_ come to care for obeying the rules? You hardly did so back home.”

“It’s a matter of simplicity. And respect. Do you not notice the great inconvenience it causes our hosts when we—” The second guy cuts off as he finally notices Don sitting on the couch. “Who is this?” he demands of Loki.

“This,” says Loki, his smirk widening into a kind of spooky grin, “is Donald Blake.”

Don’s not used to being intimidated. He’s six-four; he works out five times a week; he’s objectively good-looking; he makes nearly seven figures. But the man who just walked in beats him on every front — aside from possibly the money — and the expression on his face is the kind that makes dogs tuck their tails between their legs and slink away.

“We shall remove him together,” he growls, stepping forward.

“That’s quite unnecessary,” says Loki smoothly. “Though I thank you for the offer… and for your support in this matter.”

The big guy blinks, and (to Don’s relief) looks at his brother. “You do? Truly?”

“I do.” Loki’s smile becomes something a little more genuine. “Truly.”

Okay. Don wants to see Jane, but not _this_ much. “I think I better get going,” he says, setting aside his mug. And he tries to stand up—

—only to fall to the floor.

Everything goes hazy.

“Loki! What have you done?”

“Not every situation need be punched its way out of.”

“Midgard does not allow for this sort of thing!”

“Oh, it was only a bit of fun. He’ll survive.”

“And would he have, had I not arrived when I did?”

“I suppose that depends on how many times I refilled his coffee.”

_“Loki!”_

Don can hear the door open again, and a pair of fuzzy brown boots appear in his vision. “All right,” says a female voice. “I think I’ve got everything.”

“Darcy Lewis! You’ve returned!”

“Of course I did. I was only gone for, like, four hours. Walmart’s bargain bin kind of sucked, but I’ve got Fried Green Tomatoes, Thelma and Louise, and the Elizabeth with Cate Blanchett, even though it wasn’t really that good. And I’ll pirate The Color Purple. It’s a start, at least.”

“I… don’t understand. You’re no longer displeased?”

“Eh. I had to tell you about tampons, so I’m guessing they didn’t have a lot of copies of The Feminine Mystique on Asgard. But that’s what I’m here for. Liberal arts student for the win.”

“I intended to purchase chocolate.”

“Cool. You can still do that. Hey, what’s with the unconscious guy?”

Someone laughs.

 

***

 

Jane Foster is still asleep when Loki goes to her trailer. It would have been satisfying to remove Donald Blake from the laboratory himself, but both Thor and Darcy Lewis, oddly enough, seemed not to trust that Jane Foster’s former lover would come to no further harm while in his care.

Perhaps they had good reason.

Loki personally feels he showed great generosity in not simply using a dagger — the chopping knife would have sufficed — and leaving Donald Blake in the desert to become carrion. What will result in little more than a headache and a short stay at the medic hardly counts as a proportional response to his impertinence in coming here in the first place. Not that Jane Foster will ever know of Loki’s restraint on the matter.

His lover is nude in her bed and snoring lightly. Darcy Lewis had sworn that if he had drugged Jane Foster then she would ‘tase his ass into next week’, but he assured her he had not, and it was the truth. If for no other reason than treating a consort in such a way is beneath his dignity.

No. Jane Foster is simply exhausted.

Still, she stirs when reaches beneath the sheets and begins to stroke the smooth skin of her back. “Go ‘way, Loki,” she mumbles. “Too tired.”

“And here I thought you enjoyed my apologies.”

“You didn’t mean it.”

“You accepted them nonetheless.”

“Kept me up all night. Should ‘pologize for _that.”_

He slips a hand over her backside and teases his fingers between her thighs. She is sticky and smells of him. As it should be. “If you wish for me to make further amends…”

But Jane Foster only groans. “What time is it?”

“After noon.”

She murmurs something, letting out a little sigh as Loki presses deeper—

—only to dislodge his hand as she sits up abruptly. “Oh,  _shit_. Don was supposed to be here by now.”

“There’s been no sign of him,” Loki lies.

“Really?”

“No.”

“Oh.” She scowls at her clock. “Typical.”

“It’s a terrible loss, I’ve no doubt.”

“Don’t start.”

“Your mortal life is irreparably blemished by his absence.”

“I mean it, Loki.” She pushes him away; he allows it, as a concession to her dignity. “I got enough misogynist crap in grad school, okay? However they act where you came from, you’re on Earth, in New Mexico, in _my_ trailer. So you’ll play by my rules. No more he-man stuff. Deal?”

He doesn’t intend to smile — and if he had the ability, he would conceal it — but he’s too pleased to stop himself. “Deal,” he says. “And when you are in Asgard, in the palace, in my chambers… you will play by _my_ rules.”

Jane Foster stares at him for a long moment… then gulps. “I’m going to wind up in a slave Leia costume, aren’t I.”

Loki has no idea what that means. He kisses her back onto the mattress rather than admit it.

And he managed all this without the aid of magic.

This is by far the best day he has had in a very, very long time.

 

 

 


	14. Wherein everyone learns a little more than they wanted to.

 

**puella-magi-homura-akemi: Darcy shows Thor and Loki Cards Against Humanity. Jane’s stuck with explaining the references they don’t understand.**  
  
 **watermellow: Loki, while assisting with Jane’s ‘research’ *clears throat*, finds out about…porn. Jane is Not Pleased.**  
  
  


_Wherein everyone learns a little more than they wanted to. (Humor/Slight crack. R.)_

 

  


“This is a terrible idea, Darcy.”

“It’s efficient. And I’m just going to go through the white cards. How else are they going to learn?”

 _“Learn?_ As though mortals have conceived of anything in their short civilizations that Asgard has not already done a thousand times over.”

“Hey, _you_ guys are the ones who spent two hours on YouPorn.”

“Yeah, thanks for that. Do you know how many viruses you picked up? I’m still defragging my hard drive.”

“It remains unclear to me how a piece of machinery can contract an illness.”

“Story for another time. Let’s get started.”

  
  


“Not one word, brother.”

  
  


“Why would one not simply find a woman instead?”

“Because only royalty gets laid on command.”

“Yeah, not _all_ of us find ravenous sex-gods who make us wake up the whole neighborhood every night.”

“Shut up, Darcy.”

  
  


“Oops. Forgot about Jurassic Park. I know what we’re doing tomorrow.”

  
  


“Alfheim.”

  
  


“Also Alfheim.”

  
  


“Alfheim again.”

“Holy shit, what the hell goes on in Alfheim?”

“One day, when I introduce you to Fandral, he will tell you the entire glorious tale.”

“I can’t _wait_ to meet that guy. And hey, is Alfheim where the horse thing happened?”

Silence.

  
  


“Freshman year.”

 

  


“Also freshman year.”

  
  


“Freshman year again.”

“Okay, what did you _do_ during your freshman year?”

“I just told you: I sexted, drank Pabst, and woke up half-naked in a Denny’s parking lot.”

“Seriously?”

“What, didn’t you?”

“Of course I didn’t!”

_“Never?”_

“No!”

“Crap. Jane, I’m sorry. I’ve been neglecting you.”

“We ought take them to Alfheim, brother.”

_“Absolutely not.”_

  
  


“Mortals have the most ridiculous names for genitalia.”

“Uh-huh. And what do _you_ call it?”

Silence.

Silence.

“Oh, come on. It can’t be that bad.”

Silence.

Silence.

“Actually, I’d like to know, too.”

Silence.

Silence.

  
  


“Muspelheim.”

“Okay, I’m making a list of places I _don’t_ want to go.”

  


“We’re on that _right_ after Jurassic Park.”

  
  


“…I see. And do either of you—”

“Well, yeah, of course. Who doesn’t?”

Silence.

“Jane Foster?”

Silence.

“…surely not.”

“Hey, she was single for two years before _you_ came along. How do you think she—”

“That’s it. Game over.”

“But we haven’t gotten to golden showers yet!”

“Game. Over.”

 

 

 


	15. Wherein Thor and Loki make peace on their deathbeds.

 

**okaythislookshawkguy: The flu.**

 

_Wherein Thor and Loki make peace on their deathbeds. (Humor/Drama. PG.)  
_

_Not exactly the prompt, but in the spirit, I think._

 

 

 

Thor is dying.

“Someone will pay for this malfeasance,” says Loki, his fists clenched. “No creature in any realm shall poison a Prince of Asgard and live to tell of it.”

“For the last time, it’s not poison, it’s  _food poisoning_ ,” says Darcy Lewis. “Those burritos did look kind of funky, come to think of it.”

Thor’s innards feel as though he has swallowed Volstagg whole, and his friend is attempting to escape with axe in hand. “Loki,” he manages to say, “when you return home, tell Father of what I’ve done here on Midgard. Tell him I have tried to make amends as best I know how. Swear it to me.”

“I will,” his brother promises solemnly, face growing pale with grief. “I will tell him. Mother as well.”

“Guys, seriously, don’t be such drama queens. It’s going to suck for a day or so, but then you’ll be fine. I promise.”

Thor has never questioned Darcy Lewis’s sphere of knowledge before, but she is mistaken. He is dying. He can feel it. All his millennia of war and glory and he is to be finished by _this_ , the lowest, most cowardly form of slaughter.

The fates are cruel.

“Listen, you just stay there on the couch. I’ll go pick up some Gatorade and Saltines.” Darcy Lewis pats the top of Thor’s head. The impact of her hand reverberates through his skull. “It’ll be over soon.”

“Not speedily enough. Brother, be merciful: find a dagger and finish it.”

Loki’s skin blanches further.

“You said that about the hangover, too.”

“This is different.”

“Bet you a pack of Double-Stuf that it’s not.”

Thor’s stomach does sickening flips at the thought of the treats known to Midgardians as Oreos. He reaches for the pail by his side—

—but Loki grabs it first, retching.

 _No._ “Not you as well,” Thor moans, heart sick with both toxins and despair. What will become of Asgard, if both Princes have succumbed? Who will sit upon the throne? “All is lost.”

His brother — his poor, doomed brother — makes a gagging noise and shudders, sitting hard upon the floor.

“Glad I ordered the chicken,” says Darcy Lewis. “Don’t move; we’ll get you some blankets and a pillow.” Loki shakes his head, his pale face now sickly-white and covered in sweat, but she waves him off. “Trust me, you’ll want to stick close to the bathroom for the next twenty-four hours. Jane, you didn’t have a burrito, right?”

“Come look at this, these readings are _incredible_ —”

“Jane!”

“—I haven’t seen feeds like this since the night you arrived—”

“Yo! Jane! People are poisoned! Focus!”

“—if they can be replicated then… what? Poisoned? Who’s poisoned?”

“The royal line of the Realm Eternal,” says Thor. He eyes the distance to the bath chamber. Fifteen feet. He can make it without perishing upon the stone floor. Possibly.

“No one, but you weren’t listening. I’m going to the store. Get that foam mat and some spare blankets out of the cupboard and make up a bed, will you? The pets ate some bad Mexican.”

“Oh, is that all? They’ll be fine. Loki, I’ll just bring the papers to you.”

Loki whimpers.

“Midgard women are without sympathy,” says Thor.

Darcy Lewis just grins. “Don’t die while I’m gone,” she tells him.

He can promise nothing.

 

***

 

“I never thought it would be like this.” Thor attempts to roll onto his side, his mortal form weak with sickness and exhaustion. The last of his strength had been spent at midnight, staggering to to the bath chamber for what was surely at least the dozenth time. “I always believed I would meet my end with dignity, upon the field of honorable battle.”

“As did I.” Loki has at least retained the power of speech. Thor cannot see him through the darkness, though he lies upon the floor but five feet away. “Or in battle, anyway. Likely it would not be honorable.”

“You have always fought with honor, brother.”

“You know that to be untrue.”

“Well, you have never fought without necessity.” Thor pauses. “Unlike myself.”

Loki is quiet.

If they are to die before morning, Thor wishes to reach Valhalla with a clear conscience. “This is my doing, Loki. You warned me not to go to Jotunheim, you warned me not to goad Laufey, and had I but heeded your counsel, we would never have come to such grief. It is my fault we are here now. And I am sorry.”

Thor cannot recall speaking in such a manner. Perhaps he said these things as a child, under the stern gaze of the King and Queen; surely he must have. But as a man grown, save for apologies brought forth by Darcy Lewis — for words fall easily with her, more easily than with anyone — he has never expressed his regrets aloud.

There is, to his surprise, some relief in it.

“It was I who let the Frost Giants into Asgard.”

Thor’s musings come to a halt. “What?”

“You know I have ways between realms other than the Bifrost. I showed one of them to the Frost Giants.” Loki’s voice is weak and thready. “And I only advised you not to defy Father because I knew that would ensure you _would_.”

“But… _why?”_

“Because I was angry. Envious. Resentful. As ever, though it has never mattered.”

“Loki—”

“I thought we would be stopped before we reached Jotunheim. That Father would delay your coronation and hold your actions in contempt, but I… I never intended all of this. It was only a trick.” He laughs sickly. “And now my jealousy has killed us both.”

They could fight; they could argue for their few remaining hours over who holds the greatest share of blame for their banishment. But what would be the point? Neither of them will ever see another sunrise. “It matters no longer, brother. We shall enter Valhalla together.”

“Hel, more like. But yes. Together.”

There is a comfort in that, at least.

The silence does not last long, for Loki is soon retching into the pail once more, and Thor drags himself for what is likely the last time to and from the bath chamber. The poison is spreading. It cannot be long now.

“I wonder,” he says, once he has crawled his way back to his couch, “if they will ever learn how we met our ends. Heimdall will not know the whole story.”

“Don’t worry. Jane Foster is clever. Even for a mortal, she is clever. She shall find the Rainbow Bridge, and she and Darcy Lewis will tell our tale.”

“Yes. Yes, of course. Then Father will rain destruction upon this pitiful realm until we are avenged.”

“If Father does not, Mother will.” There is the smallest hitch in Loki’s words. For a moment Thor fears the worst — that he has drawn his final breath — but then he continues, voice thick: “Why did she not come for us? Were we so far beyond redemption?”

“Mother would not care if we were. There must be another explanation.”

“I think I may be cursed.”

“Because of this? It is poison, Loki, not spellcraft. You should know that better than anyone.”

“I have my reasons.”

“The toxin has reached your mind.”

“Perhaps. Perhaps not.” A pause. “Brother… if we must die in this wretched place, I am glad we are not alone.”

“As am I, brother. As am I. Are there any Saltines left?”

The pack of crackers hits Thor on the forehead.

 

***

 

Out in the desert, attached to several hundred thousand dollars worth of surveillance equipment and under the observation of more than twenty highly-trained S.H.I.E.L.D. scientists, Mjolnir trembles in its rocky prison.

 

***

 

When Thor opens his eyes in the morning — he _opens his eyes_ — Darcy Lewis is there, hovering over him, wrinkling her nose. “Is this Valhalla?” he asks hoarsely.

“Sorry,” she says. “Still New Mexico.”

“Where is Loki? Did he survive the night?”

“Jane’s feeding him cereal. I _said_ you wouldn’t die. You owe me Oreos.”

They have been given another chance. The morning light has never looked so beautiful. “I should not have doubted your wisdom, Darcy Lewis.”

“Nope. Now go take a shower, ‘cause let me tell you, you smell really, really gross.”

 

 

 


	16. Wherein Jane doubts herself, Loki doesn't, and Thor discovers red shells. (Romance. PG-13.)

**keydav asked you: Perhaps a drabble where they make some sort of progress to getting back to Asgard and she starts to realize that they'll be leaving soon? So she has to deal with that and comes to realize how much she'll miss them (Loki especially hehe).**

 

_Wherein Jane doubts herself, Loki doesn't, and Thor discovers red shells._ _(Romance. PG-13.)_

 

 

***  
  
  
This is Jane’s roof.  
  
Yes, her lab — her home, because home is where the heart is, and her heart will always be with her work — has been invaded by three of the strangest strangers she’s ever met (Darcy counts). And after some adjusting, she doesn’t mind too much (though the grant money was budgeted fora single intern, not a research partner _and_ an intern _and_ an intern’s intern, and before long they won’t be able to keep the electricity running for their equipment, let alone eat). They’re not so bad. Jane never realized how much her analysis could use a fresh pair of eyes. Or how isolated she’d actually become. Jane’s a loner, but not a hermit. So it’s nice, to have the company, crazy or not.

Plus there’s the sex.

Can’t forget _that_.

But there are certain things she can’t concede. No matter who’s sleeping on it, this is _still_ her roof. And she needs it for thinking. Not all the time, but sometimes. Like tonight, when the latest numbers are all swimming in her head like school of scared fish and refuse to sit still long enough for her to process them.

That seems to be happening a lot, lately.

Jane pokes at her cell again, listens to it ring six times before sending her to voicemail. _“Doktor Erik Selvig är inte tillgänglig. Lämna ett meddelande—”_

She hangs up.

“I thought these were my brother’s chambers, now.”

Jane nearly falls off the lawnchair. “Do you have to sneak up on everyone?” she grumbles, stashing her phone in her pocket.

“It would seem so.” Loki somehow wound up standing behind her without her noticing. “What are you doing?”

“Just calling Erik. Again.”

“Is it unusual, to go so long without contact with him?”

“Yes. I mean, no, not when we’re busy with projects. But he’s never not taken my calls before.” She looks up at the stars and frowns. Ursa Minor should be brighter, it seems like. Or maybe she’s just tired. “Whatever ‘research opportunity’ he got called away on, it must be incredible.”

“Or he is in some sort of danger.”

“Gee, thanks. _That_ makes me feel better.”

“It is only the truth. It seems unlikely he would willingly abandon you to the influence of Thor and myself for any length of time. He didn’t care for us.”

“He hated your guts.” Loki’s right, though, and the sick feeling in Jane’s stomach only gets worse at the thought. Erik had wanted their new squatters tossed out on the street, being as they were, objectively speaking, probably insane. Then he got a call and left without warning or explanation.

That happens, in the scientific community. Especially when you’re an expert the way Erik is. You can get pulled in at a moment’s notice, and sometimes what you wind up doing is sealed under a non-disclosure confidentiality clause, or is even classified. Not uncommon. No big deal.

But whenever she’s been stuck, or doubted herself, Erik has always been there. Always reminding her to chase down every possibility, every alternative. Always.

And now it’s been six weeks.

That’s a long time not to answer your phone.

Jane feels long, cool fingers thread through her hair, nails scraping lightly against her scalp. Her eyes close on instinct. “If you want your mentor found,” Loki tells her, “then it will be done. Heimdall can see a drop of dew fall from a blade of grass a thousand worlds away. Locating Erik Selvig will be nothing to him.”

“If we can get to Asgard.”

The stroking pauses for a moment, then resumes, a little slower. “Have you lost faith, Jane Foster?”

“No. I don’t think so. But…” Oh, it’s all so _frustrating_. “I’m running in circles with this, Loki. I can’t crack it. We have all the data we need, and the answers are there, I can _feel_ them, but they’re just— right out of reach.”

“I know the feeling well,” he murmurs.

Oh. Right. His ‘magic’. Jane still doesn’t believe in that — if he can do the things he’s implied then there must be a scientific explanation, even if neither of them understand it — but it certainly eats at him. It’s why he needs her.

Maybe tonight _she_ needs _him_.

It’s only fair, after all.

Jane opens her eyes and looks up at the only man she’s ever let work on her data, the demigod she’s sleeping with, the possibly crazy person who calls her his consort, whatever that means. Some kind of pet, it seems like. “Tell me I’m on to something,” she says. “Tell me I’m not wasting my time. Please.”

The hand in her hair creeps lower to dip below the collar of her shirt. “Your Einstein-Rosen Bridge,” he tells her, “is built of a thousand colors that rush through your body as they carry you across the stars, Jane Foster, and once you have experienced it you will never call it by its Midgardian name again. It will only be the Rainbow Bridge to you, for that is the only title that can do it justice.”

She likes the way he explains things. “I want to see it.”

“You will.” His lips brush her temple, cool and soft. “We will traverse it as many times as you wish.”

“Why?” She wonders about that, sometimes. Is it just that she’s the first woman he saw? Is it that she’s his best shot to get back to where he came from? It gets harder to tell, because that edge that was always there, waiting to cut someone who handled it wrong, has grown duller in the last few weeks. It’s obvious that he’s still not _happy_ , but he’s not so miserable as he was. He’s not so desperate for her anymore. He doesn’t _have_ to take her anywhere.

He could change his mind.

He could find the wormhole and go home without even saying goodbye.

Maybe she’ll never see _anything_.  
  
“Why?” she asks again. It matters, right now. Tonight she’s full of doubts. She needs a good answer.

Loki seems to realize that this means something, that it’s important; he takes his time responding, his thumb still stroking along her collarbone. “Because,” he says finally, “you never mock.”

Oh. _That,_ she understands.

All the rejected papers from scientific journals. The professors who laughed at her. The groveling and scraping and _begging_ she had to do for this grant, which she only even got because Erik reached in at the last minute and pulled the strings.

Yes. She understands.

He’s never mocked her, either. Not about her work. Which is all that matters.

She turns her face and presses a kiss to the base of his neck. He shivers in response. He’s not the only one who’s paid attention to who likes what. “Are we being watched?”

“Almost certainly,” he rasps.

Oh, well. At this point it’s nothing the town hasn’t seen before.

Jane pulls Loki down into a proper kiss.

 

***

 

"It might be time to find you a futon or something," says Darcy, turning up the volume on the Wii.

"I care not, as long as their actions take place on my brother’s chair instead of my own."

"I’m just saying— hey, what the hell!" Darcy gapes as Mario tumbles off the side of the Rainbow Road. "Did you just shoot a red shell at me?"

"I did."

Bowser crosses the finish line. Celebratory music drowns out the sound of lawnchairs scraping across the roof. And Thor raises his hand. “Next?” he says, grinning.

Darcy hi-fives him, then restarts the game. “Best two out of three.”

"I accept your challenge."

 

 

 


	17. Wherein the Odinsons take Albuquerque.

 

 

**annie: Loki and Thor discover Nerf guns and/or Legos and/or somehow end up in a toy store with those horribly loud battery-operated displays. The agents are not amused and contemplating each other’s demise.**  
  
 **below-the-starry-clusters-bright: Darcy drags Jane, Thor and Loki out to a club (probably in the nearest city, seeing as Puente Antiguo doesn’t seem like a thriving cultural hub). DeeplyUnamused!Loki, please.**

 

_Wherein the Odinsons take Albuquerque. (Humor/Action. R.)  
_

 

 

They’re out of Puente Antiguo.

They’re out of Puente Antiguo.

_They’re out of Puente Antiguo._

After the first hour on the road there’s a decent radio station. After the second hour there’s another three, and okay, they fight over which one they’re going to listen to (‘driver wins’ being an antiquated rule, and not even a rule, really, more of a guideline), but the important thing is, it’s a _different_ fight.

Oh, and there’s an excuse to stay in air-conditioning.

All this adds up to the fact that Agents Hakim and Dion could give a fuck whether the subjects and their roommates are leaving town to shop in Albuquerque or to burn it to the ground. _They. Are. Out. Of. Puente. Antiguo._

So they can be excused if their tailing skills are a little sloppy.

 

***

 

“Why is it I am always the one observed in public?” Loki scowls as yet another parent herds his child to the other side of the play area, eyeing the demigod suspiciously.

“Because you’re dressed like a Secret Service agent.”

“What, precisely, is a—”

“Doesn’t matter. You’re dressed like one. In the middle of a Toys ‘R’ Us. People think you’re about to tackle their kids and drag them off to be waterboarded.”

“Ah.” Loki would not have understood that term a short while ago, but the Humanity Cards have proven impressively helpful for day-to-day Midgardian life. Then his frown deepens. “They believe I would torture their children?”

“Well, probably not,” concedes Darcy Lewis. She’s playing with bubbles. They pop in the smallest breath of air. “But you make them nervous. You make most people nervous. You just have a… _thing_.”

“I do not have a ‘thing’.”

“Might help if you lost the shades. You know you’re _inside_ , right?”

“Stop it.”

“Suit yourself. If it makes you feel better, it’s only the dads worrying. The moms are looking for a whole different reason.”

True enough, though the female attention seems fairly evenly divided between himself and Thor — which is still a decided improvement over home. Loki must concede that mortals have better taste than Asgardians. Or at least more eclectic.

That being said, as in Asgard, Thor doesn’t seem to make anyone nervous. A child little older than a toddler is explaining some class of toy to him with the solemness of a commander preparing his warriors for battle. Thor nods in response, just as solemnly.

And the child hands Thor the toy.

Except it is not a toy at all.

It is a weapon.

Loki smiles.

 _That_ is an entirely different matter.

 

***

 

“Don’t play with that.”

“It’s cool.”

“I don’t care. Don’t play with it.”

“They never had stuff like this when I was a kid. If I wanted something that lit up, I got out my Lite-Brite. Did you ever have one of those?”

“Will you stop—” Hakim pauses. “Wait. Lite-Brites. Were they the things with the pegs?”

“Yup. And they had the black paper—”

“Oh, wow. I haven’t thought about those in _years_. Are they still around?”

“Dunno. Let’s go look.”

Hakim glances at the subjects. They’re supposed to be under constant observation… but so far, in all this time, basically all they’ve been seen doing is having sex and doing shots. Frankly, Hakim’s pretty sure at this point that she and Dion are only still stuck with this detail because Coulson hasn’t stopped being pissed about the New Orleans thing. Which _wasn’t_ their fault.

And, hell, maybe they still make Lite-Brites.

“Okay,” she says, ducking back around the corner of the baby clothes aisle. “But only for five minutes.”

Dion grins. “No one can stay uptight in a toy store.”

 

***

 

“No one can stay uptight in a toy store,” Darcy explains to Jane three minutes later.

Jane can’t do anything but gape at the chaos. “You said you had everything under control!”

“Everything _is_ under control. It’s okay, the Nerf guns aren’t in boxes because they’re _supposed_ to be played with.”

“Are they… what the hell are they doing?”

Darcy shrugs. “I kind of lost track. I think Thor’s got _those_ kids in evasive maneuvers. That started after Loki’s guerrilla raid from behind the Lego display. By the way, I’m pretty sure we’re getting kicked out.”

“Oh, my God.”

“You’re one to complain.” Darcy nods at the mess of wires that Jane forgot to put down. “What _was_ that?”

Jane blushes. “A Furby,” she mutters. “I was going to put it back together.”

“Too late now. And if a toy store can’t loosen _you_ up, I know what can.”

 

***

 

No Lite-Brites. Damn.

Dion comes around the corner.

Oh, shit. “Where’d they go?” he says aloud.

To his complete lack of surprise, Hakim whacks him on the back of the head.

 

***

 

Thor enjoys festivities, including those of the most rousing sort, where wine is drunk deep and laughing women are held on the laps of jubilant men and warriors still flushed from the heat of battle raise their swords once more to fight across the room (sometimes across the tabletops). He has participated in celebrations featuring all three of those activities — and a number of others — far more times than he is capable of counting.

But the music in Asgard is far superior.

‘Clubbing’, it would seem, does not suit him.

After five songs — at least he believes it is five, for they were indistinguishable to his ears — Thor manages to escape through a side exit to where Loki already waits in the alley. “I am impressed you managed for as long as you did,” says his brother.

“At least I had the courage to try. You did not even dare step foot within.”

“Which was wisdom on my part, not cowardice.” Loki’s eyes flick to the door. “How fares Jane Foster?”

“Darcy Lewis looks after her,” Thor says vaguely. He recently heard the phrase ‘Discretion is the better part of valor’; while such a concept matches Loki’s doctrine far more than his own, Thor can see the usefulness of the philosophy in a moment such as this. If his brother knew of the ‘dancing’ in which Jane Foster has eagerly participated (which Darcy Lewis assured him is entirely commonplace and not a violation of anyone’s honor), blood would be shed this night.

Loki leans back against the stone side of the building and sighs. “I am heartsick, brother,” he says. “I will concede there are benefits to this realm in its modern state. There are even parts of Midgard I would call superior to Asgard. But I want to go _home_.”

If Thor had been listening, he would have agreed wholeheartedly. But his attentions are drawn elsewhere. “We are hunted, Loki,” he murmurs. “By two.”

“I know. A male and a female, off and on since we left town.”

“Yet you said nothing.”

“Until today they seemed harmless enough.”

“They have been observing us in the village as well?”

“ _Everyone_ observes us there, brother. It’s hardly remarkable.”

“This is true. Tracking our party all the way here, however…”

“…indicates something else entirely. Yes. I agree.”

 

***

 

“We’ve been made,” Hakim tells Dion.

“Shit. This is what comes of too many hours in a shithole like Puente Antiguo.”

“No, this is what comes of looking for a fucking Lite-Brite and losing our targets for five hours in the fucking capital of a fucking state.”

Dion grumbles, but doesn’t argue. “Should we engage?”

“We might not have a choice,” says Hakim, tucking away the night vision goggles and clicking the safety off her weapon. “They’re coming this way.”

“No killing,” Dion reminds her, though he thumbs his safety off as well.

 

***

 

“No killing,” Thor reminds Loki.

“Are you playing by the rules again, brother? We’ve been hunted. Surely even on Midgard that would absolve us of responsibility.”

“Perhaps, but perhaps not. The mortals make very few allowances for the rage of battle. It would also prove a tremendous inconvenience to Darcy Lewis and Jane Foster.”

“Oh, all right. Honestly, Thor, if we do not find a way home soon I think I will go mad.”

 

***

 

“Seriously, Addy, if we don’t get out of New Mexico soon I think I’m going to lose it.”

“They’re not carrying. Let’s keep them at a distance.”

“Ready when you are.”

The agents step out into the open, hands on holstered guns.

 

***

 

“I won’t fight a woman,” Thor tells Loki.

Loki shrugs. “I will.”

 

***

 

“I am Agent Hakim,” says Hakim, voice carrying through the alley, “and this is Agent Dion of the Strategic Homeland Intervention, Enforcement and Logistics Division. Stop where you are, if you please.”

Thor begins to smile. “We do not please,” he replies, advancing. “You have been hunting us and our companions.”

“It’s true, we have had you under observation. You are Persons of Interest. That silver tongue of yours didn’t persuade Coulson as much as you thought it did.” The agents draw their weapons. “Step back _now_ , or we’ll have no choice but to take you into custody, seize your research, and do this the hard way.”

Loki’s grin is even wider than his brother’s. “Are you _certain_ about the no killing, Thor?”

_“Yes.”_

“Unfortunate.”

 

***

 

Jane’s having a _great_ time! She should listen to Darcy more often! She loves Darcy!

She should tell her that! Saying things like that is important!

So she downs another shot and shouts at Darcy: “I love you, Darcy!” Except the words kind of come out in the wrong order a little bit. Oh, well.

Darcy grins and pats her on the back. Her glasses are pretty smudged up from that guy she made out with for a little while. At least Jane’s pretty sure that her glasses are smudged. Everything’s a little on the blurry side of things. “We still have time to wake up in a Denny’s parking lot!” she shouts back.

Oh! That sounds like fun!

She should tell Loki!

Where _is_ Loki?

“Where is Loki?” Jane’s throat’s getting raw from all this yelling over the music. She loves this music!

“Outside with Thor.” Darcy points with what might be one but could be as many as three fingers. “That way.”

Oh! She should tell Thor, too! He’ll love Denny’s!

It takes Jane somewhere between five and thirty minutes to get to the back door — it’s hard to tell — but when she makes it out into the cool night air — she loves cool night air! — things are happening. Lots of swearing.

Jane loves swearing!

She doesn’t love it quite so much, though, when she realizes the swearing is coming from where Loki sits on the concrete steps, Thor wrapping Loki’s arm with the remains of his shirt sleeve. He’s bleeding! “What happened?” she exclaims, kind of.

“We faced enemies in battle,” says Thor, tightening the makeshift bandage as Loki winces. “Though my brother sustained injury from one your human weapons.”

“I am hardly the only one injured,” Loki snaps. “Find a mirror and see your face.”

“It’s true, our opponents were more formidable than I expected. Still, even in these weak mortal forms, we were triumphant.”

“Then _pursue_ them and finish it.”

“I will not. They faced the Princes of Asgard in combat. They drew blood. They escaped with their lives. They made their ancestors proud this day.”

Loki snorts in disgust. “You will come to regret your mercy, brother.”

“It is not mercy, it is honor.”

Jane blinks. More than once. Maybe a few times. “You got in a fight?” she finally asks.

Thor and Loki both look at her… and then, for some reason, they both start to smile. “This,” says Loki, “will be very amusing come morning.”

Jane loves amusing things! But there was something she was supposed to— oh, right! “We’re going to Denny’s!” she announces. “And we’re going to the parking lot!”

“We are?” says Thor.

“I think not,” says Loki.

Jane loves Loki! “I love you,” she says to Loki.

Loki, who had been fiddling with his bandage, opens and closes his mouth several times. Thor clears his throat. “Perhaps I should—”

Jane loves Thor! “I love you,” she says to Thor, beaming.

There is a moment of silence.

Then: “I hope,” snarls Loki, “that you suffer a _truly_ spectacular hangover.”

Darcy pokes her head out the side exit of the building. Jane loves Darcy! “I love—”

“I know, I know,” says Darcy. “You told half the club.” Loki tries to stand up, pales, and falls back on the steps, grimacing; Darcy ignores him and says: “I’m three sheets, guys. Who’s sober-cabbing?”

Thor and Loki glance at each other. “Have you learnt how to drive?” asks Loki.

Thor shrugs. “How hard can it be?”

 

***

 

Six blocks away, heaving for breath through what he’s pretty sure are at least two broken ribs, Dion says: “Well, whatever Coulson does, at least we’re not going to be sent back to Puente Antiguo.”

“There is that,” agrees Hakim — just before she spits out a broken tooth.

 

 

 


	18. Wherein some things are truly universal.

 

 

**nurselaney asked you: I just read all of your Banished! Odinsons drabbles, and I NEED Loki to find out what a Slave!Leia costume is.**

_Wherein some things are truly universal. (Humor. G.)  
_

 

 

Darcy is going to start keeping a checklist.

She never realized just how much general knowledge is, well… _general_. It’s getting close to two months since the pets moved in, and while she’s taught Thor hundreds of things, like how to work the machines at the Laundromat (because if there’s a giant muscle-y guy around there’s no reason for _her_ to haul the bags all that way) and how to use the kitchen without setting anything on fire (he’s finally gotten over his aversion to the microwave) and how to tell the difference between the Wii and the PS3 (which saved a lot of scratched games), there’s still just _so much_.

Who knew?

Still, she’s good at it. Maybe once she graduates she’ll be a teacher, or a life coach. After all this she’s pretty sure Jane will give her a good letter of recommendation.

Today Darcy is doubling up the lessons. It is time for Thor to a) learn how to fold the laundry, not just haul it to and from the laundromat, and b) learn the difference between Star Trek and Star Wars. Luckily, laundry and movies go together perfectly.

“This is not what space is like,” says Thor, who is starting with the towels. Baby steps.

“No, but it’s doesn’t matter, remember? It’s a movie.”

Usually when Darcy says stuff like that, Thor nods and keeps going. But apparently this is a sticky subject, because: “I understand that mortals have only just begun to expand their horizons beyond Midgard itself, but if these are the sort of lessons you teach each other, it will be another thousand years before you make it even as far as Nornheim, let alone further.”

“Oh, don’t worry. Once Jane figures out all her wormhole stuff, humans will be popping up all over the place. Most of the biggest discoveries have come from just one or two people at a time, you know.”

“Very few realms take kindly to ‘popping up’, Darcy Lewis. You’d fare best with an escort.” Thor pushes aside the completed stack of towels and starts on the t-shirts. “But don’t worry; once they meet you, many of my people will volunteer for the task. Are those metal men something mortals have accomplished in reality?”

“No. We’re working on it, though.” It’s a shame A New Hope and The Empire Strikes Back were already checked out from Redbox, but as Thor was probably going to be confused no matter what, Darcy didn’t think it would be a big deal to start with Return of the Jedi. Maybe she was wrong. C-3PO might be easier to understand with a little more intro. “Robots are a big part of pretty much all science fiction. I’m not sure why we’re so obsessed with them.”

“I’m not certain why you mortals choose _most_ of your obsessions.” Darcy jumps at Loki’s voice; he’s behind the couch now, watching along with them. Thor’s the only one who never seems bothered by the way Loki sneaks up on people, but then, the two of them have lived together for a couple thousand years. If that doesn’t get you used to someone’s habits, nothing will. “This is not what space is like.”

“I said the same,” says Thor.

If they keep this up they’ll never get to Star Trek, and Darcy really wants to know if there’s an equivalent to Tribbles. Probably there is on Alfheim.

But rather than argue, Darcy just gets to work on the pants and says nothing. If Loki’s loosened up enough to come watch a movie with them — even just hovering around so he can pretend like he’s not really interested — she doesn’t want to rock the boat. He’s not Thor, but he’s a decent enough guy when not all angsty and clingy with Jane.

Or maybe it’s the Percocet he scored at the hospital when he got shot. That’ll get anyone relaxed.

Either way, he’s got lots to learn too, so it’s better if she doesn’t scare him off.

They manage to watch together with a minimum of snark for the next twenty minutes, which is a minor miracle, only broken up by Loki smacking Thor’s shoulder when he starts trying to fold Jane’s underwear. (Which is cute and super-lacy. Hey, everyone’s got their indulgences — but none more than Loki, whose clothes they have to pick up from the dry cleaners before noon. If Jane’s so worried about money, then she’s going to have to talk Loki into wearing jeans like a normal person.)

Thor and Loki’s brief argument on whether or not being frozen in carbonite is anything like some kind of process back on Asgard stops when Leia pulls off her bounty hunter mask and starts making out with Han. “Do they know each other,” asks Thor, “or is that just a standard greeting of their people?”

“Oh, no, they fell in love in the last movie. She just rescued him, is all.”

Loki leans in. “But did she not threaten to destroy the building a few moments ago?”

“It was a trick.”

“Ah. Clever.”

Jabba starts laughing on screen and his minions drag Han and Leia away. “Well, that was a painfully obvious conclusion,” says Loki.

“And here I thought it was ‘clever’,” says Thor.

“It was, but the worm warlord is cleverer.”

“Admit it, brother — you did not anticipate the outcome of their gambit.”

“I shall admit to nothing so ridiculous.”

“If you’re going to fight, boys,” says Darcy, “I’m turning the movie off.”

Thor humphs, and Darcy can feel Loki’s glare burning into the back of her head, but they quiet down. Yeesh.

But only for about two minutes. Because then the fanboy moment of all fanboy moments occurs — and Darcy is pleased to note that, at the end of the day, alien demigods are still just men after all. “That’s Leia’s slave costume,” she informs the speechless brothers. “It’s kind of a thing.”

“It appears vaguely Asgardian,” says Thor, leaning closer to the screen — and if Darcy’s supposed to believe that’s just to get a better look at the jewelry bands, he’s going to be disappointed.

“So girls wear metal bikinis where you guys come from?”

“Ah, no, not precisely…” He coughs. “But—”

“It’s okay. Carrie Fisher’s hot. There’s three generations of geeks that’ll agree with you.”

Loki’s awfully quiet. When Darcy turns around to make sure he hasn’t fainted or anything (either from the Percocet or Carrie Fisher’s cleavage), he’s staring back at where Jane’s typing away on her laptop, looking her over speculatively.

Then he smiles. A smile with a really, really obvious meaning.

Okay, _way_ more than Darcy needed to know.

 

 

 


	19. Wherein Loki pouts... until Jane gives him a reason not to.

 

**No prompt this one; it just kind of needed to happen. Also, I felt like writing smut. Do I need a reason?**

 

_Wherein Loki pouts... until Jane gives him a reason not to. (Romance/PWP. NC-17.)_

 

 

Loki’s arm hurts.

Which makes it nearly impossible to sleep.

Both of these facts are grating on his nerves.

First of all, he can hardly believe that it is taking _so_ many days for such a minor wound to heal. He faced worse in the training yard as a stripling child, let alone on the field of battle. There were several times in several wars where Loki truly thought he would not survive his injuries. Nornheim, Alfheim, Vanaheim, Jotunhe—

Not the last. He will not think of the last.

But on all these occasions, the healing rooms of Asgard, capable of nearly anything, had saved his life from these brutal wounds. This? A small hole through the flesh of his arm? From a small human weapon fired by a small human female? Nothing to speak of. He should have recovered in moments.

Yet here it is, days later, and the damned thing _still_ throbs with pain. The medication he received when the laceration was sewn shut is now gone; Darcy Lewis was quite firm in her assurances that he would not be permitted to have more (and on these subjects he must yield to her superior knowledge), then offered him an substitute known as Tylenol, which has proven worthless. So he tosses and turns on the laboratory couch — banned as he is from the roof and the trailer, where he cannot support his injured limb in comfort — and listens to the wall clock tick away meaningless seconds.

This mortal form he must inhabit is truly beyond weak. If it is not failing to heal then it is demanding food, or rest, or recovering from lack or excess of one of those two. Perhaps it is a good thing he cannot wield magic, after all — he’d likely lose control and fry himself alive at the smallest error.

Thor has teased him a few times over his complaints, but that stopped when Loki reminded him of his own behavior during their near deaths by poisoning. Since then he has received nothing but sympathy from his brother.

And Darcy Lewis has been kind enough in her own airily dismissive way, Loki must admit. If she says this will pass in time, it likely will. The slave — servant — intern — has proven herself adept at sorting serious matters from the mundane.

But Jane Foster has hardly noticed.

Of course, there is no reason for her to do so. They are lovers, but she does not love him, nor he her. Such things are irrelevant; she is hardly the first consort he has taken for little more than physical indulgence and mild amusement with their company until he grows bored and sets them aside with honeyed words and well wishes. (Thor has always preferred the instant gratification of a single night’s pleasure, for which he is never short of choices; Loki prefers to dissect a partner over a period of time.) And almost to a woman they were more beautiful, more charming, more… skilled than his current companion.

So it matters not if Jane Foster has spent the last week scowling at her star charts instead of minding him.

It _doesn’t_.

It also matters not when the insignificant creature in question comes creeping into the laboratory twenty minutes later to stand beside the couch, poking him in the chest as though it isn’t the middle of the night. “Loki!” the unsympathetic little human hisses. “Loki, are you asleep?”

He feigns unconsciousness.

“Loki, wake up!”

He rolls away to face the back of the couch — and bites hard on his tongue as his arm jars against his side.

“ _Loki!_ I cracked it! I figured it out! _Please_ wake up!”

If she expects him obey her snapping fingers and imperious call, she can just—

Loki sits up straight, complaints forgotten. “You have?”

Jane Foster’s hair is sticking every which way and her face is beaming brighter than the moonlight. “I did,” she says. “I was just— I was thinking, well, not thinking, sort of sleeping and not sleeping, I’ve been  _so close_ , but I couldn’t quite— but then it just all _clicked,_ just out of nowhere and I _saw_ it and I wrote all over the walls of the trailer because I couldn’t find paper fast enough but it’s _there_ , it all makes sense now, I knew the science was there and I _found_ it!”

She’s talking so quickly and he’s so tired that only bits and pieces are sinking in, but… “You can find the bridges,” he says as flares of excitement begin to flicker around his heart. “You’re sure.”

“I’m sure! It’s not random! I _told_ you it wasn’t random! I can predict where the wormholes will be, _any_ of them, down to the last _second_ , it might take some time before one turns up but now all we have to do is find a way to jump them and we’ll be on our way! Loki, I cracked it, I cracked it and we’re going to see _space!_ ”

Loki doesn’t even have time to smile before she grabs his face and kisses him.

He can’t bring himself to object. He also can’t bring himself to object when she climbs onto his lap to straddle him, grinding hard against his rapidly responding body. He hasn’t had her in nearly a week and that has perhaps contributed to his sour mood.

A sour mood which is rapidly improving, truth be told.

“You’re amazing,” Jane Foster says as she unbuttons one of those soft striped shirts she often wears to bed. “Three _years_ of collecting data, but just two months of matching your theories with mine and I had everything I needed.” She’s nude and her bare chest brushes his as she fumbles with his pants. “Three years — _three years_ — but I _finally_ did it and it’s all thanks to you.” Her mouth can’t stop against his; everything she speaks is through eager, messy kisses. “You’re incredible. You’re perfect. You’re a _genius_.”

Loki preens. “You are the cleverest mortal in this realm,” he responds graciously. “You would have succeeded in the en—” His sentence ends in a choked moan as she sinks down onto him without further preamble and begins to ride him with fervor.

Oh. _This_.

Who knew mortals could feel so delightful: mortals who do not care if you have magic, who know nothing of Frost Giants, who can laugh without mocking and value intelligence over brawn.

If he had been aware these things, he would have begun vacationing on Midgard _centuries_ ago.

“You’ll take me, right?” She digs her hands into his hair, her body hot and wet and desperate. “You’ll show me all the stuff you talk about. The Bifrost, the different worlds, the—”

“Everything,” he swears.

He will give this ardent human whatever she asks and more if she will only continue to look at him as she does now, as though he was the one who planted Yggdrasil and coaxed each branch to life.

Loki can feel the needlework ripping in his arm and pays the pain no mind. He has suffered worse.

“I knew,” she gasps, tight, flaming, fluttering. “I knew when we met, I knew you had what I needed. You were a wreck but I _knew_.”

He  _had_ been a wreck, staggering out of the desert into what he now knows as a diner, covered in filth and more terrified than he’d ever been in his life. Thor had already taken obvious note of her, and she of him. But before Loki had finished his first cup of coffee Jane Foster had turned from his brother to pepper _him_ with questions, bright and eager with interest.

She is not the first to prefer him to Thor, but she is the first to turn away from the elder prince in favor of the younger. She is the first to look at him — at moments like this, anyway — like he is a god even though she has never known him as one. She is the first — the very first — he thinks he may not be able to do without.

His fingers splay across her back, trace the warm curve of her spine. “I will give you anything you want,” and that is another first.

Jane Foster presses her forehead to his, moving ever faster. “I want to see the stars,” she tells him. “It’s all I’ve ever wanted.”

The easiest request she could have made. Once he is whole again, that is. They will return to Asgard, Thor will be forgiven — he always is — and he will lift Mjolnir once more, while Mother restores the magic to Loki’s fingertips and explains away all his preposterous worries from Jotunheim.

He is going to go home because of the little mortal moaning in his arms.

Loki tugs gently on the ends of his lover’s hair, encouraging her to arch backwards so that he may lave his tongue down her throat and to her chest. The blood seeping into his bandage is nothing. He can begin repaying his debt with _this_.

She whimpers and shudders through her climax, and as he follows he does not beg for more noise than she is inclined to give. He does not need it. Loki Odinson needs nothing more than his family, his home, and Jane Foster wide-eyed with wonder as he shows her the secrets of the universe.

The rest is meaningless.

 

***

 

“Sir? Sir, we’re getting some strange readings out of Jane Foster’s lab.”

Phil Coulson sets aside the latest dispatch from Fury — it seems Selvig may finally be on to something with the cube — to look over the agent’s shoulder at the laptop screen. He is not a scientist; he’d much rather have team surveillance on the subjects, or failing that, a decent audio feed. But after the debacle with Hakim and Dion there haven’t exactly been loads of volunteers for the former, and the latter has proven fickle as late spring bakes the desert air. The only bug they placed last week during the subjects’ sojourn to Albuquerque that has functioned with any reliability has been the spectral time-matter diagnostic stream.

Which is what’s sending purple spikes all over their usually flat meter. “What does it mean?” he asks. “Besides something strange.”

The agent pauses. “Well, it could— that is—”

Coulson (correctly) interprets this to mean the agent has no idea. But before he can mention something about the thousands of dollars per hour that S.H.I.E.L.D. has invested in this project, the feed flatlines again, as though the spike never occurred.

“Ah,” says the agent.

“‘Ah’, indeed,” says Coulson. “Collect every scrap of data on that anomaly and send it to Washington for _real_ analysis. I want that spike being picked apart at the Triskelion in the next half hour.”

He really needs to put together his own team.

 

***

 

Come morning, after Jane Foster shares the good news and Thor gives her a hug that lifts her right off the ground and then starts babbling to Darcy Lewis about the taverns of Asgard, it occurs to Loki that his arm is feeling much better.

When he unwraps his bandages, only the shredded needlework and a puckered scar remains.

Well. Perhaps he underestimated mortal forms, after all.

 

 

 

 


	20. Wherein Thor and Loki inadvertently start a gambling ring in Puento Antiguo.

**mylyz: Role reversal day! The two princes decide to teach the women how to defend themselves with ordinary objects found in the lab - no tasers.**   
  
**shorinai: The card was rejected? Uh-oh, money troubles. Maybe it’s time for someone to explain to the boys that food isn’t cheap and they eat a lot. While Loki’s pulling his weight working with Jane, maybe Thor should find a way to help pay for all they’ve been consuming. (i.e. job-hunting!Thor)**

 

_Wherein Thor and Loki inadvertently start a gambling ring in Puento Antiguo. (Humor. PG.)_

 

 

Fernanda feels like maybe she crossed an ethical line somewhere awhile back, though she’s not quite sure where it was. Strangers in a small town require observation, and when there’s free porn you can’t be expected to look away…

But then there’s… _this_.

On the other hand, the bar’s profits haven’t been this good in the last three years. A woman has to pay the bills.

And if the scientist, her intern, and the _cabrones_ brothers didn’t want an audience, they really shouldn’t have made themselves so interesting in the first place — and then they shouldn’t do what they do out in broad daylight.

Still. Ethical line.

Fern will think it over when she counts the till later tonight. “Final call,” she shouts. “Speak now, or forever hold your peace!”

_“¡Treinta y cinco!”_ Manuel pulls a five dollar bill out of his pocket and passes it to Fern. _“¡No, no, seis!”_

She makes a quick note of his bet. Manuel has a soft spot for Darcy, and it’s costing him a lot of money today. But, hey, it’s his cash. No business of Fern’s how he blows it. “All right, that’s it! Are they ready?”

“Looks like!” someone calls.

Fern’s clientele look out the front window across the street, watching the four figures in the dusty yard between Jane Foster’s trailer and her laboratory.

Darcy and Thor step close to each other. Darcy raises a six-inch blade. Thor, unarmed, smiles.

As Darcy takes the first swing, Fernanda clicks her stopwatch.

 

***

 

“Block with your forearms,” says Loki, circling the fight with a critical eye. “You’re not quick enough to dodge. Then slash back with your left— your _other_ left, Darcy Lewis—”

“Shut up!” Darcy flinches away on instinct as Thor feigns a swing at her face. “That’s not fair, Loki was distracting me!”

“It matters not. Asgardians fight with honor,” says Thor, easily dodging her awkward lunge with the kitchen knife, “but very few other realms do.”

Loki snorts. “The honorable Asgardian tale is a myth. Given an excuse any one of them will knock your mortal teeth from your head. Now, when his arms are raised like so, turn the dagger and strike for the liver—”

But Darcy can’t do it. She’s just not the stabbing type.

Then she’s flat on her stomach, hacking grit out of her mouth.

 

***

 

Fern hits the watch. “Twenty-nine point five one,” she calls. “Round up to thirty. Cherry Beth!”

Cherry Beth, hair to match her name, hoots as the handfuls of bills come her way. Eli, who had twenty-nine seconds, throws his fiver in disgust. Fern’s going to have to toss him out if his manners don’t improve.

“Are they going again?”

“I think they’re taking a break!”

A chorus of boos.

 

***

 

“I don’t see why I can’t bring my taser with me,” grumbles Darcy as Thor helps her to her feet. “It’s not like the TSA’s going to search my bags, right?”

Loki and Thor give her identical confused looks, and she sighs. Yeah, there’s sense to this whole self-defense thing, even here on Earth, but that doesn’t make it fun. This is _why_ she bought a taser instead of taking a kickboxing class.

“Your weapon needs an electrical charge to function, does it not? I think you’ll find plug outlets difficult to come by in Asgard.”

“Yeah, yeah.” She hates it when Loki’s logical. Or maybe she’s just bitter because he’s the one who told her to use a knife instead of a crowbar, which would have been her next choice. She used that on a creep in a parking lot once. Worked really well.

Once Jane finds one of those wormholes, this whole realm-jumping thing is going to be a really awesome vacation. Even better than that time Darcy’s high school art history class went to Rome for a week.

But she doesn’t like the knife.

“I don’t want to hurt you,” she mutters to Thor as he brushes the sand off her back.

He grins at her. “You are a very quick learner, Darcy Lewis, but I have had many centuries of training under the greatest masters in the history of the Realm Eternal. It is not an insult to say you have _no_ chance of striking me with your weapon.”

“I could do it by accident,” she insists. She knows he’s telling the truth, but… it’s not fair to him, but she’s used to thinking of Thor as just a little bit helpless. This is a guy she had to teach about _microwaves_ , for God’s sake. She doesn’t want to stab him in the gut.

“I give you my solemn oath that you won’t. Look, I’ll show you.” Thor motions at Loki, who raises an eyebrow. “Come, brother. Take her knife.”

Darcy frowns, but Loki just groans. “We’re not starting _this_ again, are we?”

“For demonstrative purposes only.”

“You really expect to face _me_ while I wield a blade — yourself weaponless — and come out unscathed. Your ego knows no bounds, Thor.”

“If it helps, I would suggest no such thing were you not still lame in the arm.”

“I beg your pardon? I am hardly lame.”

“Then prove it.” Thor winks at Darcy, who, already kind of fidgety from all her own fighting, doesn’t like the sound of this at all. “With a dagger in his hand, Loki is one of the finest combatants in all the nine realms. Even without his magic, I imagine. When _he_ cannot land a blow, will you be satisfied that I am safe from you, Darcy Lewis?”

Like it matters what Darcy says now. Loki’s already taking off his suit jacket, a creepy kind of smile on his face. “You understand,” he says, “that you’ve left me with little choice but to sever a tendon. Perhaps two.”

“Imagine what you will, brother.”

Oh, great.

She hands Loki the knife and retreats to where Jane’s pacing with her cell phone. “Our pets are about to kill each other,” she informs Jane.

Jane just waves her off.

Darcy hopes for her sake that the goodbye sex was really awesome.

 

***

 

“Holy shit.”

“Holy shit.”

_“Holy shit.”_

“Double for entry on this round,” Fern calls over the sudden din, pulling the phone close in case they need to dial 911 in a hurry. (Not that it would matter: Mickey’s cruiser is parked out back, and the cop himself is by the window thumbing through his wallet.) “Time _and_ winner. _¡Rápidamente!”_

In twenty seconds over two hundred dollars are on the bar.

 

***

 

Darcy doesn’t scare easily. Never has. Sure, sometimes she gets freaked out — like when they found Thor staggering around in the desert like a crazy drunk homeless person and she’d had no choice but to zap him — but overall she’s pretty laid back. She likes to think so, anyway.

But this is a little different.

“Jane, you’ve got to make them stop,” she says, watching as Loki spins and swipes again and again. Thor keeps blocking with his forearms the way Darcy was supposed to be doing, and he was right, it’s pretty obvious that Loki’s right arm is a little stiff. That’s the only reason Thor’s not been sliced to ribbons. “Loki will knock it off if you tell him to.”

If Jane has the slightest idea of what’s going on — that is, the _hardcore knife fight going on twenty feet away_ — she doesn’t acknowledge it. She just claps a hand over her exposed ear and keeps yelling something about delayed payments into her Android.

Typical. Darcy is so going to renegotiate the number of credits she gets for this internship. “Okay, guys, you’ve made your point,” she shouts. “You’re both big tough badasses, all right? You can put the rulers away now.”

Thor takes a kick to the ribs that makes him reel back. Without a pause Loki flips the knife to his left hand, swinging for his brother’s throat—

—Darcy screams—

—and Thor sweeps Loki’s feet out from under him before the blade can do more than nick his jaw.

Loki hits the ground with a groan. Thor drops to his knees at the same moment, clutching his ribs and gasping for air.

 

***

 

“It’s a tie!” Fern shouts as her patrons start arguing. She sweeps the money off the counter and into a drawer. “House wins!”

The bar fight that follows is, if anything, worse than the one outside.

 

***

 

“You are morons,” Darcy seethes, standing over them both with her hands on her hips. “You freaked me out. Do you know how much I hate being freaked out? A whole, _whole_ lot. You are _jerks_.”

Both the idiot brothers are still on the ground. “I drew blood,” grunts Loki.

“I… would hardly… call that… _blood_ ,” says Thor, wheezing.

“I’m getting the Mace,” Darcy declares. She has to declare it loudly, though, because there’s some kind of commotion going on in the bar across the street. Sound really carries in this town. “Maybe a face full of pepper spray will teach you both. _Idiots!_ ”

She _hates_ being freaked out.

As she goes to open the door of the lab, though, something goes wrong. The lights flicker off. The screens of the computers go blank. The hum of Jane’s equipment — funny, Darcy’d never really noticed a hum before — disappears. “Hey, what the hell just happened?”

And Jane _finally_ lowers her cell. She’s pale as a ghost. “Our check bounced,” she says. “ _Again_. They’ve cut our power.”

Darcy blinks. “It’ll be kind of hard to track all that wormhole stuff without electricity.”

“You _think?”_

A chair crashes through a window across the street.

“I won, brother,” says Loki, still unable to get off the ground. “Concede it, and I will not sever your tendon as I promised.”

Thor just rolls over and punches him in the ribs.

 

 

 

 


	21. Wherein there are surprises.

 

**Cate: I am wondering what is going on with mama Frigga and the others in Asgard.**

**asterisk blue: “What the HELL is that doing in my home?!” “Darcy the Wise said it was good for relaxing.” “Never again. NEVER AGAIN.”**

  
  
_Wherein there are surprises. (Drama/Humor. PG-13.)_

 

_I started trying to write specifically to the dialogue of the second prompt, but it kind of went sideways. Um… sorry._  
  


  
  
  
Surprise has given way to denial which has given way to confusion which has given way to a warrior’s fury. In any other circumstances the outcome of this progression would lead to someone’s untimely death, but unfortunately, one cannot face a liege of the Realm Eternal in combat without dire consequences.

Besides, even if Sif won, Thor would kill her himself for raising a weapon against his mother.

Sif has tried to see the Queen every day since Thor was banished and the All-Father fell to the Odinsleep.

She is never given audience.

In spite of logic, threats, and yes, begging, Heimdall will not disobey his Queen’s orders, not even to rescue he who should rightfully be king. So Sif comes and she waits outside the throne room where Volstagg and Fandral and even Hogun have since forsaken their cause. ( _We have not abandoned Thor,_ Hogun tried to excuse himself, _but this path to his aid has been barred. We must find another way._ They, too, will one day pay for their disloyalty.)

There is no other way. The Queen must be convinced to yield.

(If someone had told Sif she would one day need to plead Thor’s case to _Frigga_ , she would have had the person’s tongue for speaking such absurd falsehoods.)

So used is she to her daily ritual of solitude, when the guard opens the door Sif she nearly strikes him down in shock. “The Queen will see you,” he says formally.

At last.

Once inside Sif is quick to kneel, even though the sight of Frigga upon the throne is a disconcerting one. “My Queen,” she murmurs. “Thank you for granting me this audience.”

“It has been a long time in coming, Lady Sif.” Frigga’s voice is as warm as ever, and it fills Sif with hope. “Do not think I have failed to note your patience. Nor your loyalty.”

“Then you know why I am here, my Queen.”

“Yes. To beg my sons’ return to Asgard.”

Sif pauses minutely before nodding in affirmation. In truth, she cares only for the return of _one_ son. _There are traitors in the house of Odin_ , said Laufey, and Sif has her own opinions on just who that traitor is. But there is no chance, none, that Frigga will bend for Thor and not Loki. Sif will have to plead for them both.

(And if Loki _is_ a traitor, well… one does not slay the enemy two blades’-lengths away when the enemy before you is swinging for your neck. Sif’s suspicions will hold until a better time.)

“I was present in Jotunheim,” Sif says, still on one knee. “What transpired there was foolish, dangerous, and against the express will of Odin, our King.”

“Yes,” agrees Frigga, her placid face a mask, “it was.”

“I have known your children since I was a child myself, my Queen. I know as well as any of their flaws. Mistakes were made — by all of us — and punishment no doubt ought be dealt. But the All-Father—” here Sif swallows, because this is dangerous ground “—I feel the All-Father was too hasty. Banishment is surely too harsh a sentence.”

The Queen smiles, sadly. “I felt the same. The absence of my sons is a daily knife in my breast.”

“Then surely you will bring them home.”

“I will not.”

Dashed hope is a painful thing. “But why?” Sif cries, standing. “You sit upon the throne, you hold Gungnir! You can undo your sons’ banishment with a single order to Heimdall!”

“I can. But, again, I will not.” Frigga stands as well, looking down at Sif, and Sif suddenly feels a girl again, masking endless insecurity with boldness and golden hair. (The loss of the latter she will never forgive Loki for, never.)  “There is a purpose to everything the All-Father does. I confess that I did not understand his reasons, at first. But I have come to see that even in _this_ there is wisdom.”

“No. There can be no wisdom in Thor’s banishment.”

“Nor in Loki’s, I assume you mean to say.”

Sif bites her tongue. “Yes,” she answers after a moment, the tang of blood in her mouth. “Nor in Loki’s.”

The briefly severe look that crossed Frigga’s features softens. “There are none who love Thor and Loki more than myself,” she says gently. “But I am not so selfish as to demand their presence at my side while they learn so much in their present positions. Now stop haunting my door, Lady Sif, and be satisfied that no harm will come to my children while I draw breath.”

“They learn,” Sif says, blank with disbelief. “On Midgard. Surely you are in jest, my Queen.”

But Frigga only smiles. “It would seem,” she replies, “that Midgard is full of surprises.”

 

***

 

Nick Fury doesn’t like surprises. They are near the top of his list of most hated things, and that particular list is really fucking long.

By the way, rapidly climbing the ladder of that list is the entire state of New Mexico, a place which, until a few months ago, Fury had no strong opinion on one way or another. But considering the godforsaken place seems to be a breeding ground for surprises, he’s starting to develop what one could perhaps refer to as an antipathy.

He throws the latest file report from Puente Antiguo aside and pinches his nose.

When Nick Fury has an antipathy, people get shot.

The presence of the artifact in the desert wasn’t so bad. Fury eats stranger things than that for breakfast each day. But when research and surveillance alike confirmed the presence of what are, in fact, two interstellar beings considered to be Norse Gods… that was another thing.

At least the subjects seemed non-hostile and largely powerless. This was good for Fury, in that he was busy enough with Tony Fucking Stark (the man’s actual middle name, as far as S.H.I.E.L.D. is concerned, they’ve got it on his file and everything) that he could leave the escapades of two culture-shocked and, by all reports, extremely sex-starved aliens in Coulson’s capable hands. So to speak.

But it took the World Security Council all of six minutes to get word of the presence of aliens — as though aliens in New Mexico were  _weird_ — and then all of the sudden they wanted Project P.E.G.A.S.U.S. moved to front-list priority. Like Nick Fury didn’t have enough other things going on (see aforementioned Stark, Tony Fucking — and the less said about what happened in Harlem, the better).

So now Fury’s got Selvig and a team of scientists stuck under the sand poking at a blue cube of unlimited power, trying to make it do things, because nothing bad has ever happened to humanity when people go around opening mythological boxes. He’s got the Triskelion demanding twenty reams of cross-referenced interviews about a street fight between the New Mexico subjects and two agents in some back alley of Albuquerque. He’s got a hammer in a rock putting off unidentifiable readings and spikes of bizarre energy coming out of a meaningless astrophysicist’s laboratory. And he’s got a bad feeling in his gut.  
  
That being said, the weapons Pierce has commissioned from the cube derivatives _are_ pretty impressive.  
  
But Fury would just feel better if the subjects in Puento Antiguo would stop doing such weird shit. For one day. Just no weird shit for _one fucking day._  
  
Did he mention he doesn’t like surprises?

 

***

 

“Well,” says Darcy, _“that_ was a surprise.”  
  
Thor nods, still rubbing the smoke from his eyes. Even Loki seems mildly impressed.  
  
And all three of them have the decency to look sheepish — yes, Loki too — when Jane discovers them in the ‘kitchen’ with the melted remains of twenty cinnamon-scented candles, two bags of marshmallows, and what’s left of their stove.  
  
For a moment she can’t say anything. The only indication she’s having any reaction at all, really, is the slight tremble of the flashlight in her hand. Then she says: “Those were our last candles, you know.”  
  
“Yup,” says Darcy. “They were sacrificed in the name of morale.”  
  
“Morale.”  
  
“Darcy Lewis thought we would all benefit from s’mores,” Thor tells Jane. “But we’ve exhausted our supply of kindling for the rooftop fire.”  
  
“So you tried to make s’mores in the oven. With candles. At midnight.”  
  
“I saw it on Bill Nye when I was a kid,” explains Darcy.  
  
“The fire _was_ contained quickly,” adds Thor.  
  
Jane just looks at Loki, who shrugs. “I was awake,” he says. “And I like s’mores.”  
  
No electricity. No candles. No stove. Soon to be no batteries. And now no marshmallows.  
  
“First thing in the morning,” Jane tells them, “you are all getting jobs.”  
  
  
  


 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sometime over the last couple days, what’s supposed to be a silly little collection of random fluff!smut prompts has developed an elaborate plot. Help.


	22. Wherein Loki solves Jane's problems.

 

**subjunctivemood asked you: Brodinsons are banished AU: Jane & co. run out of money. Whatever are they going to do now??**

 

 

_Wherein Loki solves Jane's problems. (Romance/PWP. R.)_

 

_This was also largely inspired by[this most lovely piece of fan art](http://kneel-before-the-godofmischief.tumblr.com/post/86505949158/ok-i-will-do-another-because-shower-sex). I was going to work on something more general, but, well… that’ll be for the next post._  
  
 _Thanks for being patient for the update while personal things rocked me. Should be back on a more regular writing schedule now. Yay!_

 

 

 

Jane loathes cold showers. It doesn’t matter that she’s in New Mexico; even when it’s a hundred and twenty degrees outside, she wants her shower hot as the sun’s surface. (It’s nearly summer at this point, which is yet another thing to worry about. If the AC isn’t back on by the first genuinely hot day then the equipment is going to fry — equipment that could take months, if not years, to rebuild. She didn’t sketch schematics while she was making them. As a physicist, her note-keeping is impeccable; as an engineer, she flies on intuition.)

But if there’s one thing Jane hates more than cold showers, it’s not washing her hair for three days.

Which is why she’s in the dark — the candles are gone, the batteries for the flashlights are dead, and there’s no window in the bathroom — under the aspiring-to-tepid water, scrubbing herself frantically so as to get out again as fast as possible. And she’s just about done when the door opens and the room floods with mid-afternoon sunlight.

Not _again_. “Someone’s in here!” she screeches.

“Really,” she hears Loki drawl. “I would not have guessed.”

Well, at least it’s not Thor. (That happened once. It was awkward.) Still, Jane keeps the shower curtain pinned tight to the wall as she peeps around the edge, trying to simultaneously glare at him and blink away the water that runs down her face. “I thought you were job-hunting,” she says.

“You were mistaken.”

“Is anyone else out there?”

“No. It would seem my brother is quite genuine in his quest for gainful employment. I can only presume Darcy Lewis is assisting him.”

“And you’re not ‘questing’?”

“Of course not.”

Typical. “Listen, aren’t you clear on how this works?” Jane sticks one arm out from around the curtain and ticks off the following points on her fingers. “To find the Einstein-Rosen bridges we need data—” first finger “—which we get from computers—” second finger “—which run on electricity—” third “—which we have to pay for—” fourth “—which means we need income.” Fifth. Good. All points made on one hand.

“Yes, you _did_ explain the matter at some length. But never fret; I’ve already contributed my share.”

“You have?”

“I have.” He pauses expectantly, obviously waiting for her to ask just _how_ he’s accomplished this.

Jane rolls her eyes and ducks back under the water. “I don’t want to know,” she says.

The bathroom door closes, leaving her in darkness.

She lied, of course. She’s dying to know. But she’s not going to give him the satisfaction of her interest if he’s in one of his smug, superior, Prince-of-Asgard-and-Everything-Everywhere moods.

Also, she’s crabby.

But whose fault is that, really? She’s standing in a cold shower. The grant money is gone because she has homeless advanced being freeloaders with no concept of basic economics and an intern who’s never balanced a checkbook. They’re so _close_ , and if Jane fails to prove the viability of wormholes because of something as stupid as _late fees_ she’s going to—

The curtain pulls back, and Jane yelps as Loki steps into the water without so much as a shiver. At least, not that Jane can feel; it’s too dark to see. “I thought you left,” she says.

“Mistaken again,” he replies affably, and she can hear his smirk without seeing it. He’s in a _really_ good mood.

This is suspicious.

“I was about to get out if you want to clean up.” But she steps closer to him — closing all eight inches of the space between them, this is _not_ a large shower — and nuzzles instinctively into his warm (and now wet) chest. She’s freezing.

Loki just makes an affirming noise, his long fingers slipping around her body to play with the ends of her wet hair. Intentionally or otherwise, his hands shield some of the spray from her back. It makes her sigh in relief. “Do you not want to hear of how I’ve solved your woes, Jane Foster?” he murmurs. “I’ll gladly tell you.”

Once, eons ago, before she lost interest in fiction in favor of Euclid, Jane read Peter Pan. The line _Oh, the cleverness of me!_ comes to her mind right now. “Nope,” she lies. “Still don’t care.”

He makes a pouting sort of noise.

She briefly wonders just why it is that she’s sleeping with an alien who can swing from sulky teen to boastful brat in the blink of an eye. He’s not exactly her type.

Then his fingers slide down her back, over her ass, and dip between her thighs.

Oh, right. That’s why.

She feels him smiling as he bends to kiss the side of her neck. It’s a very long way down. “Must you be so abominably short?” he teases.

“It’s not like I can help it,” she grumbles (or tries to — it comes out more as a breathy sort of sigh). “Why are _you_ so tall?”

There are days when he’s standoffish about that sort of comment, but they seem fewer and further between. Today he laughs, moves his hand out from where it had started to delve with purpose (and, yes, she whimpers in protest), and hooks his arms under her thighs to lift her off the floor. She wraps her legs around his waist on instinct. “Now you’re just showing off,” she says.

He laughs again as he braces her against the cold tile. “When we return to Asgard,” and he’s almost giddy as he says it, “I will demonstrate true _showing off_ , Jane Foster.”

He’s smug, and moody, and self-absorbed, and frequently just not very nice.

On the other hand (he slides into her effortlessly because she’s been slick more or less since the moment he stepped in the shower) he’s also incredibly good at this. And he helps her when he doesn’t have to. And he listens when she talks. And he gave her what she needed to finally unravel what’s going to be the greatest astronomical breakthrough since Copernicus.

Loki’s not her type, but her type hasn’t worked out so well for her in the past.

When he rocks slowly and steadily, moaning with pleasure against her throat, Jane considers that it might be time to expand her horizons.

 

***

 

Twenty minutes later, toweling off her hair, Jane sees the check for one thousand dollars sitting next to her computer.

It is signed by Chester Benson.

The “For” line reads _Public service._

“You didn’t,” she says.

Loki, who for once doesn’t seem to care about impeccable presentation, lounges on the sofa wearing nothing but pants and a sly smile. “The gentleman was eager to oblige,” he tells her. “It would seem we’ve had quite an impact on the local quality of life.”

Jane covers her face with her hands. “We’re being paid to have public sex.” Dear God, they _are_ porn stars.

“Oh, I promised nothing for the future.” Loki’s smile widens to a grin. “Consider it as tangible appreciation for actions already, ah, _consummated_.”

“You’ve _got_ to be kidding.”

“Not at all. Apparently we’re considered impolite for the very behavior these villagers seem to so enjoy, so why not derive benefit from your culture’s hypocrisy?” His expression turns intense and weirdly hopeful, like he’s expecting something out of her. “Are you not pleased?”

On one hand, Jane feels like ripping the check up and burning the pieces on principle.

On the other hand…he’s got a point.

And he’s  _always_ got a point.

Which is… okay, it’s kind of impressive.

Jane folds up the check and sticks it in her pocket. “No more exhibitionism from now on,” she warns him, trying to maintain at least a little of the moral high ground.

“As you wish.” Loki stretches, and he looks kind of like a cat except twice as self-satisfied. “You may express your gratitude by _not_ informing Thor of this turn of events. It would be a shame to deprive my brother of the personal growth he might derive from all the gainful employment you’ve so glowingly recommended, don’t you agree?”

She stalks over to the sofa with the intent of smacking him.

By the time they’re done with each other she has to take another cold shower.

 

 


	23. Wherein Kevin Smith happens in the Ordinary Love universe and the author regrets nothing.

 

**mujaki: Clerks, The Darcy Edition: Hardly Clerkin’; Clerks, The Thor Edition: This paper you give me is not money!**

 

_Wherein Kevin Smith happens in the Ordinary Love universe and the author regrets nothing. (Humor. PG-13.)_

_(As a side note, Kyle is in fact the name of the guy in the pet store in Thor. The DVD place is indeed across the street; who knows if Cherry Beth is as well. I like to think so_.)

 

 

Kyle has, as a general rule, tried to keep his head down with regards to the Batshit Brothers. Yes, they’re new and different in a place that doesn’t see new and different things that often, but new and different isn’t always good. A lot of times it’s just… batshit. And that much free porn? _Has_ to be a trap.

Best to just stay out of it.

But it’s hard to stay out of things when you get a call from your boss at seven in the morning announcing that you’ve got a new employee to train.

“Tell me,” says Thor, looking around Pet Palace, “where are the stables?”

Kyle’s not even supposed to _be_ here today.

 

***

 

Cherry Beth of Titan Video has adopted a strict rule of working no more than four hours of her six hour shifts. What with the advent of internet piracy and streaming downloads and, now, free pornography from the mad scientist’s lab, business isn’t exactly booming. But for the people who still live out in the sticks and do moisture farming and Jedi meditation like all desert hermits, there’s no cable and daily Redbox returns aren’t feasible. So once in awhile Obi-Wan lookalikes will turn up, drop off two dozen DVDs, pay a hundred dollars worth of late fees, then scoop up another two dozen and wander back off into the sunset. That’s how Titan Video survives.

Point being, it’s not a job that requires staying behind the counter for six hours every day. Not as long as she can see the front of the store from wherever she goes.

Which is how she explains it to Darcy.

“If you feel like going out,” says Cherry Beth, “leave the phone off the hook. That way if the boss calls it sounds like you’re busy.”

“Yup,” says Darcy.

“If a customer asks, you don’t have any opinions about what movies are good and what ones aren’t.”

“Right.”

“If someone wants to pay with a card, say the machine’s broken. Cash only. Easier to process at the end of the shift.”

“Got it.”

“Cool. I’m off, then.” Cherry Beth grabs her purse from off the rack. “Try not to let the place burn down.”

“No problem.”

Training done in fifteen minutes. New record.

 

***

 

“The newspapers need to be changed twice daily in every cage,” Kyle tells Thor, unfolding the third copy of the Puente Antiguo Chronicle (which is seventy-five percent classifieds). “Otherwise the smell gets pretty bad.”

Thor isn’t paying attention. (Of course. Because that would be too easy.) He’s busy scratching one of the kittens beneath its orange chin, smiling as its eyes glaze over in bliss. “At what time are they released?” he asks.

Kyle frowns. “Released?”

“Yes. For the hunt.”

“Uh… there’s no hunt, man.”

Thor stops playing with the kitten (it immediately reaches through the bars and starts pawing for him) and turns to Kyle with a confused expression. “Then how,” he asks, “do they capture vermin for their sustenance?”

Kyle lifts a bag of Meow Mix. “They eat kibble, not vermin.”

The batshit brother takes the bag and looks inside. “But it does not move,” he says doubtfully. “The animals cannot understand this substance is intended for their consumption.”

“No, they eat it fine.”

“How do they know to do so?”

Kyle is pretty sure a lecture on the history of feline domestication would fly over the trainee’s head. “They just do,” he says.

Thor shakes the Meow Mix in obvious skepticism, then raises his eyebrows in surprise as the kittens all start to mew with excitement. “Each time I feel I’ve come to comprehend Midgard,” he remarks, “I discover there is something else to learn.”

Kyle sighs.

 

***

 

“I’d like to rent The Godfather,” says the customer.

“It’s not in.”

“There’s a copy right in front of you.”

“That one doesn’t count.”

“Why not?”

“Because I’m borrowing it.”

The customer peers at the stack of twenty DVDs on the counter. “Okay,” he says, “how about The Wizard of Oz?”

“That one’s mine, too. They’re all mine.”

“You can’t just take all the most popular movies and keep them for yourself.”

Darcy glances up from her legal pad for the first time. Most of the AFI’s top one hundred films are listed on it neatly. “Look,” she says, “do you know how much work there is in educating aliens on pop culture? I’ve been at it for _months_ and they still don’t know about flying monkeys or taking it to the mattress. Well, Loki sort of does, but not like that. I’ve still got a lot of ground to cover. But if you want to come over for movie night once the electricity’s back on, feel free. Just know that sometimes they get really angry with the television. Thor almost smashed in the screen at the end of Million Dollar Baby, and Loki didn’t talk for hours after The Empire Strikes Back.”

The customer backs slowly out of the store.

 

***

 

After picking up a Slurpee and a newspaper, Cherry Beth makes the executive decision to stop into Pet Palace. Everyone knows the blond batshit brother is working there now, and Fernanda’s got a book going on how long he’ll last. (Cherry Beth’s down for the afternoon of his fifth shift. The pot is up to three hundred dollars.)

“While she does seem to be pleasant company,” Thor is saying when Cherry Beth walks in, “I fail to see the purpose behind a hound that doesn’t _behave_ as a hound.”

Kyle looks like he’s about to shoot Thor, himself, or maybe the Chihuahua in his hand. “People like little dogs,” he says.

“It cannot be considered a dog if it would drown in a mug of mead.” Thor nods courteously to the squirming puppy. “I intend you no offense, my friend.”

Cherry Beth sucks the end of her Slurpee from the bottom of the cup and wonders if it’s too late to bump her entry back a few shifts. “There’s a parakeet about to get sucked into your air vent,” she says to Kyle without a ‘good morning’. (You don’t waste formalities on someone who ate your paste in elementary school.)

“Oh, shit.” Kyle hands the puppy to Thor (it can sit comfortably in his palm and still have room to lick its tail) and grabs a net from the corner. “How did that get out?”

“There was an insect upon the ceiling,” says Thor, allowing the puppy to nip at his thumb. “Your bird eyed it hungrily, and so I opened the cage.”

“Look, I told you, the birds are decorative!”

“Just because they are pretty does not mean they cannot be of use. Consider.” He nods to a tank of angelfish, which swim mindlessly among plastic ferns. “They are quite beautiful, but they will also make an excellent supper once they’ve grown a bit larger, will they not?”

Cherry Beth and Kyle stare.

And the parakeet disappears into the vent.

 

***

 

A few minutes later a ruffled and confused purple bird flutters onto the sill of the Titan Video display window.

Darcy nods to it.

It nods back. Maybe. It can be hard to tell, with birds.

“Excuse me,” says the woman holding a squirming toddler on her hip, “where is the children’s section?”

“That way, I think,” says Darcy, waving absently, attention returned to her list. The stack of DVDs on the counter now numbers thirty.

A few moments later the customer exits in a huff, having no interest in renting Cum-Guzzling Sluts XIII.

 

***

 

“I’m not even supposed to be here today,” moans Kyle, wrestling the three foot boa constrictor back into its cage, not noticing that Thor has placed the nearly-eaten Chihuahua puppy in with the kittens. (They _are_ the same size.)

Cherry Beth just flips another page of the newspaper. “Hey,” she says to Thor, “tell me — is Darcy seeing anyone right now?” It’s a bad idea to date co-workers, as a general rule, but this chick is hot enough that Cherry Beth could make an exception.

No luck. Thor frowns and says: “She sees me, of course.”

Damn. Not a surprise, but still… damn. “Well, let me know if that doesn’t work out for you,” Cherry Beth says, scanning the wedding announcements in the Lifestyle section. “Hey, Kyle — that ex of yours is getting married.”

He drops the lid of the cage. _“Huh?”_

“Not your day, is it?”

Thor glances over Cherry Beth’s shoulder. “What,” he asks, “is an Asian design major?”

Unnoticed, the snake slithers free once more.

 

***

 

It’s dusk when Cherry Beth returns to the video store. “You’re off,” she tells Darcy. “Hold up okay?”

“Yup.” Darcy comes out from behind the counter, stretches, then gathers up an armful of about six million DVDs. “Can I get these taken out my paycheck?” she asks.

 

***

 

“How much did the boss promise?” Kyle asks Thor, popping open the till.

“The agreement stands at six per hour. A fair price, he informed me, for a man with no Security Numbers.”

That would explain a lot. “All right, then. Rules for _that_ are you get paid in cash at the end of each day — and if anyone in a suit asks, you don’t work here.” Kyle pulls out sixty dollars, which is way more than the trainee earned (less, if you count deductions for the variety of lost and damaged items), but, shit, he’s not supposed to be here today. “Go in peace.”

But Thor just narrows his eyes. “I have given my word to aid Jane Foster,” he says, and he suddenly seems a lot taller. “It is vitally important that I receive currency in compensation for my assistance.”

“Uh, yeah. That’s where the twenties come in.”

“Do not mock me, my friend. Your paper will not suffice. I will accept no less than silver pieces.”

Kyle blinks… then shrugs, pulls out the lock box, and starts counting out from the backup supply of quarters.

 

***

 

“Nice haul,” Darcy remarks when she and Thor meet on the sidewalk.

He hefts his plastic bag of coins. “Loki is not the only one to stand firm on bargains,” he says. “What have you procured?”

“New stuff. Once the power’s back we’re starting with Doctor Zhivago— hey, wait.” Darcy stops mid-step, staring down the street at their lab. Their very well-lit lab. “The lights are on. When did that happen?”

Thor smiles. “Today, it would seem. Employment is even more lucrative than I was led to believe. Now, tell me: what are your opinions on the subject of hounds that fit in teacups?”

 

***

 

Thor is somewhat disappointed to discover that Loki has restored the electricity, and thus his employment shall end at a single shift. Darcy cheers him up with 2001: A Space Odyssey.

The 7-11 cashier wins the pool. _  
_

 

 

 


	24. Wherein Darcy and Loki suffer from overheating.

**This installment is prompted by the following GIF:**

****

**I am weak.**

 

_Wherein_ _Darcy and Loki suffer from overheating. (Humor/Drama. PG.)_

 

  
  
  
Jane’s new draconian budgetary rules mean that the air-conditioning gets turned off at night.

This might be fine for freeze-babies like her, and it doesn’t seem to bother Thor, who still camps on the roof and has proven himself impervious to all weather. (The only difference is that he sleeps without a shirt on now. There’s been another uptick in people walking around with binoculars.)  Seriously, that’s great for them, but _Darcy’s_ the one who has to sweat through the wee hours of the morning in her converted closet bedroom with next to no ventilation.

Sometimes — usually at three AM, when she’s on top of the covers in nothing but underwear because normal human beings are not meant to sleep in eighty degree heat — Darcy seriously questions whether six college credits are worth all this.

But then she remembers that her former classmates are currently writing papers on how the Leviathan pertains to the European Union while she, Darcy, gets to hang out with aliens and preparing to spend summer break traveling to places with hundred-flavor mead and flying sex snakes.

In other words, it stopped being about the credits a long time ago.

Regardless, the fun she’s having overall doesn’t help her sleep. So she sits up, pulls on a robe, and heads out to the ‘kitchen’ for something to cool down.

There are those who would be spooked to find an unexpected backlit-by-moonlight shadow-y figure standing silently by the sink in the middle of the night; Darcy’s not one of them. “Hey,” she says.

Loki jumps. Then he turns to glare at Darcy like it’s _her_ fault he’s lurking around for no apparent reason. “I’m not accustomed to people sneaking up on me,” he growls.

“Sucks to be mortal.”

“Indeed.” And he turns back to the sink — very pointedly.

Well, _someone’s_ in a great mood.

Not that that bothers Darcy. If other people’s crankiness got to her, she’d probably be miserable all the time. Like practically everybody else. “What are you doing?” she asks, ignoring his prickliness.

Loki snorts in obvious annoyance and doesn’t answer, but he doesn’t shy away as she glances over his shoulder. He’s holding an ice cube against his wrist. Quick way to cool the blood. “Pretty clever,” she comments.

“I’ve never cared for the heat,” he replies shortly.

“You should talk to Jane, and get her to ease up.”

“I doubt she’ll listen.”

“She might.”

“Then why don’t you do it?”

“Uh, because, if you haven’t noticed, the way you ‘talk’ to her is a lot more persuasive.”

“I don’t wish to discuss temperature with Jane Foster — or with you. Now leave me be.”

“You’re just cranky because you can’t sleep.” Darcy opens the freezer, sticks her head in just for a minute to enjoy the blast of cold, then roots around until she finds a solution. Two of them, as a matter of fact. “Here.”

Loki looks at her offering with suspicion, but he sets his ice cube in the sink and takes it all the same. “What are these?”

“Popsicles. I grabbed a box yesterday. Hope you like cherry.”

Five minutes later they’re sitting on the couch and Darcy’s down to chewing on her stick, watching in mild fascination as Loki continues to work on his popsicle one careful lick at a time. No wonder half the town can hear Jane screaming.

Darcy’s been living with Loki — more or less — for over three months now, and she still doesn’t know him. That’s a first; usually even when people don’t like her they stop clamming up after awhile. But, then again, Loki’s still pretty clingy with Jane, and most of the time Thor’s around, too. So when have they really had the chance?

If they’re going to be heat-wimp buddies, they should talk more.

“So,” tries Darcy, “space. Is it fun?”

“Yes.”

“That’s nice.”

“It is.”

Silence.

So much for that.

Finally Loki’s popsicle is gone too (and Darcy’s contemplating that it’s been too long since she had a boy- or girlfriend. Seriously, damn). She’s feeling a lot cooler; he’s glancing back at the fridge. “Take another one if you’re still hot,” she says. “I got the twenty pack.”

The second one goes a little faster, which is too bad from Darcy’s perspective. It doesn’t seem to cheer him up.

“Want to talk about it?” she hears herself saying.

“Talk about what?”

“Whatever it is that’s bugging you.” She props her feet up on the coffee table. “Well, whatever’s bugging you right now, anyway.”

Darcy doesn’t like not knowing people.

Not that she expects an actual answer — beyond being told to get lost, that is. So it’s a surprise when Loki says: “Do you believe in curses, Darcy Lewis?”

“Nope,” she says without missing a beat. “Do you?”

He looks down at his left hand with disgust and not a little fear, like it’s possessed or full of gangrene. “Logic,” he says miserably, “dictates otherwise.”

That’s not cryptic or anything. Darcy decides to go with patting him on the shoulder. “You and Jane get too into the logic stuff,” she tells him.

“You have no use for logic.”

“I didn’t say that; I just don’t get the point of overthinking things.”

“Ah. Now I see why my brother believes you wise.”

“Thor’s a lot happier than you are.”

“He has more reason to be.”

“You and he are in the exact same boat, except _you’re_ getting laid. If anyone should be moping, it’s him.”

“Moping?”

“It means brooding.”

“I do _not_ brood.”

“Please. You’re the best brooder I’ve ever met. You’re practically a brooding _expert_.” He scowls (which, Darcy doesn’t point out, counts as brooding), so Darcy adds: “You don’t brood when you’re relaxing and having fun, though. Then you’re pretty easy to like.”

Okay, that wasn’t much of a compliment.

But Loki stares at her like no one’s ever said anything so nice about him in his entire life. “Am I?” he says, sounding stunned.

“Sure. You just need to lighten up.” Just about _everyone_ needs to lighten up, in Darcy’s opinion.

Loki continues to stare — but just as it’s starting to get weird, he laughs and says: “Mortals are surprisingly better company than Asgardians.”

“Well, we don’t have loads of time to sit around and sulk.” Darcy shrugs. “If you and Thor fix everything the way you want and start being real aliens again, you’re going to live, what, a couple thousand more years? Jane and I only have another fifty or sixty. I’m not going to use them up worrying about curses.”

All the amusement drops out of Loki’s face.

It only takes a few seconds for Darcy to realize what she did wrong. “Uh, you forgot about that part, didn’t you,” she says slowly.

He is gone from the lab, crossing to Jane’s trailer, with what’s left of his popsicle, in less time than it takes a cat to flee a fire hose.

Oops.

Still, Darcy feels somewhat less guilty about screwing that up when, a little while later, she hears the usual sounds of the two of them going at it carry across the yard. And, hey, maybe all the angst-sex will come in handy again; Chester from down the street might pay for the AC to turn back on. You never know.

She grabs another popsicle and goes back to bed.


	25. Wherein there is motion beneath the surface.

**Due to the need for plot advancement, we're starting to set aside actual prompts and move on to specific event choices. That being said, very soon we will be reaching situations wherein I will be asking for a whole new set of prompts… because REASONS.**  
  


_Wherein there is motion beneath the surface. (Drama. PG.)_  
  


  
  
Newton’s First Law of Motion: an object in motion stays in motion.

This holds true for events, as well.

 

***

 

Her new algorithms are working so well that Jane thinks she might shake apart with excitement. The potential locations of future atmospheric anomalies are popping up with dizzying speed. She can barely keep _track_ of them all. There’s no guarantee that they’ll pan out — she has to leave guarded uncertainty in the hypotheses, she _is_ an astrophysicist, after all — but if she’s right, the Einstein-Rosen bridges will be opening soon. Very soon. And nearly on top of Puente Antiguo. They won’t even have to go _looking_.

When she tells Loki, he smiles for the first time in three days.

That’s good. She was starting to worry. Aside from turning up in the middle of each night to fuck her as though he’ll never have another chance, he’s been weirdly standoffish. If he’s changed his mind when she’s _so close_ to realizing all of her dreams…

She has no doubt he could block her from the Bifrost if he wanted to. He knows how to cross it; she doesn’t.

“You’re still going to take me with you, right?” she asks him anxiously. “You’re not going to jump through the wormhole without me.”

Please, let him not have changed his mind.

But Loki shakes his head, pulls her close, presses cool lips to her temple, and takes deep breaths that ruffle her hair on exhale. If she didn’t know better she could have sworn she saw tears in his eyes. “I will not leave you behind,” he says, and there’s iron in his words. “There is no dilemma I have yet failed to solve to my satisfaction, Jane Foster. You will join me in Asgard, and I will allow  _nothing_ to take you from me.”

This again. “No he-man possession thing,” she warns him, though she’s weak-kneed with relief.

His mouth curves into a smile against her skin. “As long as we are on Midgard,” he agrees, “we will play by your rules. As promised.”

There is  _so_ a slave Leia costume in her future.

She… might enjoy that a little.

When his hand goes to cradle the back of her head, Jane’s left wondering where the line is between _need_ and the entirely irrelevant ( _entirely irrelevant_ ) L-word. Because there’s a strange feeling here. She’s not great at reading people, but… she’s beginning to suspect Loki is losing track of the difference.

Or she’s just overthinking things the way Darcy’s always lecturing her about. That’s possible.

"And if," Loki murmurs, almost reluctantly, "I have difficulty solving this particular dilemma… perhaps you may be able to do so."

Jane knows him well enough to understand what an incredible compliment _that_ is.

Maybe she’s losing track, too.

She can swear she feels sparks under her skin when he begins to stroke her back. Which makes no sense. But real or imaginary, those sparks feel incredible, and before long Jane’s not thinking at all.

 

***

 

“There they are again,” says the S.H.I.E.L.D. technician, watching purple spikes jump all over the screen. “Either the diagnostic stream is malfunctioning, or something’s up.”

Given all the dispatches Agents Hakim and Dion compiled before their transfer, Coulson’s willing to bet more than one thing is ‘up’. “Do we know what it means yet?”

“No, sir. There’s been no reply from the Triskelion.”

“Then send this reading to them along with the rest.” Coulson pauses.

There’s been nothing to indicate anything out of the ordinary from S.H.I.E.L.D. command. Neither Fury nor any higher ups are required to relay information they’ve garnered from field reports — if there’s any information at all.

But Agent Phil Coulson hasn’t gotten to where he is by ignoring his instincts. And his instincts tell him something is rotten in the state of Denmark — or rather, New Mexico.

“Print hard copies of all of this,” he tells the technician. “And back it up on multiple flash drives too.”

“Yes, sir.”

 

***

 

Thor uses his earnings to pay for six new porcelain mugs (the store owner sighed when he produced the silver, an odd reaction) and brings them to the tavern belonging to the wench — no, _woman_ — Isabella. “As replacement,” he says solemnly as he hands them to her in a carefully padded box, “for those I so thoughtlessly destroyed.”

“It’s okay,” says the woman Isabella. She sets the box upon the counter, adjusts her spectacles, and smiles. “You meant no disrespect, right?”

“Indeed I did not.”

“Good. Want some pancakes?” When Thor glances in his sack to count his remaining silver, she waves him off. “On the house. Consider it a trade for all the entertainment. I’ve never seen anything so funny as Kyle chasing that snake down the boulevard.”

“Then I accept,” says Thor graciously. “And you have my gratitude.”

 

***

 

It doesn’t take any technicians for this one. It only takes Barton’s hawk eyes to notice the little engravings that crawl across the theoretically solid surface of their spooky hammer — engravings that vanish again just as quickly.

A pebble dislodges from the hammer’s stone pillar. It drops silently to the sand.

Huh.

He snaps on his radio. “Tell Coulson he’d better get his tremor sensors in place, ‘cause we’ve got some weirdness here.”

Twenty minutes later the Triskelion receives another report.

 

***

 

Erik Selvig hasn’t seen the sun in months.

At first this bothered him, but now… well, though his drive has been tempered with age and wisdom (life is not _all_ about research), he is first and foremost a scientist, and will be until the end.

So living in a secret base under a hundred feet of rock and sand? A small price to pay to examine the _cube_. To learn its limits, its powers. Its secrets.

Sometimes it even feels as though the cube is whispering to him.

In recent weeks his analysis has advanced by leaps and bounds, as though the cube is reaching out, searching, hunting for something familiar (which is ridiculous anthropomorphism on Selvig’s part, maybe he _has_ been below ground too long). It fairly crackles with energy. And the first time he manages to synthesize just a bit of that energy, to pry it off and transfer it to the miniature generators provided by S.H.I.E.L.D. (why did he ever mistrust them?), he imagines he knows how Oppenheimer felt after the Trinity test.

Except he, of course, is not about to destroy the world.

The cube will bring an unlimited power for all to share.

And this is the third report received by the Triskelion.

 

***

 

Alexander Pierce smiles when he reads the file. It is the kind of smile Nick Fury would question on anyone else — but if there is one thing Fury will bet his life on, it’s that Pierce can be trusted.

But just because someone can be trusted doesn’t mean they can’t be wrong.

“Project P.E.G.A.S.U.S. is progressing faster than we anticipated,” says Pierce, turning over the last page.

“Too fast,” replies Fury, “since we still don’t know what we’re dealing with.” Playing around with something you don’t fully understand is a really excellent way to wind up surprised, and, well… Fury has made his thoughts clear on surprises.

Pierce pushes his chair back from the desk and stands. “You’re right,” he says. “We don’t. But I suspect our subjects in Puente Antiguo will have a few helpful answers for us. Perhaps it’s time we stop observing and asks the direct questions.”

Fury raises an eyebrow. “Based on their interactions with us in the past, it sure doesn’t seem like they’re the talkative types.”

But Pierce just laughs, shakes his head, and claps Fury on the back. “My friend,” he says, “as though persuading people to talk has ever been a problem for S.H.I.E.L.D.”

 

 

 


	26. Wherein SHIELD agents get nervous, Odinsons learn about espresso, and the author indulges in a cliche.

**So, yeah, it’s been awhile since we’ve seen our banished!Odinsons. This summer has not been so fabulous. But (and we’ll all cross our fingers and toes here) the climax is coming together in my head, so let’s start to bring it on home, shall we?**

**This particular bit, in addition to generalized plot momentum, was partially inspired by a Kat Dennings GIF:**

**Because reasons.**

 

 

 _Wherein SHIELD agents get nervous, Odinsons learn about espresso, and the author indulges in a cliche. (Humor/Drama. PG-13.)_  
  
  
  
  
“The preacher’s cat is an avaricious cat named Aditya.”

“The preacher’s cat is an ambidextrous cat named Alejandro.”

“The preacher’s cat is an auricular cat named Amarion.”

“What? ‘Auricular’?”

“It’s a word.”

“I know it’s a word. That’s not the point. How can a  _cat_ be auricular? Does it climb up the ear canal and lick your cochlea?”

“First of all, _ew_. Second, there’s nothing in the rules that says the adjective has to be a plausible characteristic.”

“It’s implied.”

“You used ‘azure’ four rounds ago.”

“That’s legit. There’s a breed called ‘Russian Blue’.”

“Yeah, but they’re _gray_. Maybe, like, a little blue tinge or something, but still gray. Azure is sky-colored. You ever seen a sky-colored cat?”

“ _You_ ever seen a cat nuzzling an ear drum?”

“No, but that’s my _point_. If you can use ‘azure’, I can use ‘auricular’.”

“You’re just getting snippy because you know you’re going to lose. Again. But I’ll give it to you because I’m feeling generous. The preacher’s cat is an avuncular cat named Angus.”

“ _‘Avuncular’_? Are you kidding?”

“You opened the can of worms. Not my fault.”

It took some time, but Agents Adele Hakim and James Dion had grown accustomed to desk duty. The amount of medication it took to recover from the Albuquerque incident (which still turned out better than the New Orleans thing) probably had something to do with it; when you’re on a whole lot of Vicodin, shuffling paperwork really isn’t too bad a life. (Hakim thought she would get away with a crown and wound up with two thousand dollars' worth of bridge work. Thank God for government dental plans.) After the meds wore off the job got a lot more boring, but it was still, the agents agreed, more interesting than surveillance detail of the Puente Antiguo subjects. And less painful.

Whatever was going on in New Mexico, it was officially no longer their problem.

Until Agent Rumlow showed up.

 

***

 

“Remind me why we’re traveling two hours out of the village?” says Loki from the back seat, fiddling with the cool-air vent on the vehicle ceiling.

“It’s a surprise,” replies Darcy Lewis.

“I dislike surprises.”

“Trust me, this one’s cool. I can’t _believe_ it took me so long to think of it. Plus, Thor needs the practice.”

Thor tightens his grip on the steering wheel, peering through the window. The van is not so very different from the boats of Asgard, though he’ll always prefer a horse. (Or to fly with Mjolnir, but to think of that only brings pangs of yearning and loss.) “If there were a bit less dust,” he says to Darcy Lewis, “the path would be clearer.”

“Well, that’s desert life for you.”

The van runs over another ‘pothole’, and Thor watches graph papers flutter in the rearview mirror. “Hey!” exclaims Jane Foster.

“My apologies.”

“Darcy, this had  _better_ be worth all the gas money we’re spending.”

“It will be.”

 

***

 

“Okay, seriously, we’ve had about ten debriefings on what happened at the club,” says Dion as Rumlow closes the door to the interview room. “Just read the notes. It’s all there. We don’t have anything new to tell you.”

Rumlow smiles in a way that makes Hakim wish, for just the briefest instinctual moment, that she was armed. That doesn’t mean anything, though; you don’t wind up the leader of S.T.R.I.K.E. without being a little spooky, especially when settling down into a folding chair on the opposite side of a table in an interrogation room. Intimidating airs don’t just turn on and off like a light switch. “This isn’t about the Albuquerque incident. Fury is more interested in the details of the subjects’ day-to-day lives in Puente Antiguo.”

“Those are _also_ documented, sir,” says Hakim.

“Extensively,” says Dion.

“And we’re going to document it again.” Rumlow sets a recorder on the table. “Tell me about the subjects’ interactions with the people around them. Was it intimidating?”

 

***

 

When they park (with only minimal damage to the neighboring vehicle) and enter the small green building, Thor cannot but sniff the air. Whatever the wenches are cooking smells delicious. “What sort of tavern is this?”

Darcy Lewis grins and spreads her arms wide. “ _This_ ,” she says, “is what is known as a Starbucks.”

Jane Foster sits at a table without glancing up from her data, but even Loki looks impressed as he approaches a shelf and picks up a bag labeled _Pike Place Roast_. “It smells of coffee.”

“Oh, it is _so_ much more than coffee.”

Thor frowns. “But… is coffee not a sort of gravel?”

“Welcome to life beyond Folgers, young grasshopper.”

 

***

 

“‘Intimidating’ is a strong word,” says Hakim cautiously.

“Agent Hakim, don’t hedge on this. Like you said, there’s plenty of documentation on the Albuquerque incident. You asked them to step back, and they beat the shit out of you.” A pause, then Rumlow adds: “ _After_ you were caught on your detail.”

Like either of them were going to forget _that_ in a hurry.

“What about the scientist and the intern? How did the subjects interact with them?”

Dion crosses his arms — and fights back a wince at the pain in his ribs. Still knitting. “Okay, _that_ we’ve written up _way_ more than we ever wanted.”

“Yeah, some of it got passed around at the main office. Nice stuff. There’s bets on about whether you copy and pasted from that Fifty Shades book.”

“I’m insulted, sir.”

“Deal with it. Fucking and movie watching is one thing. Do the subjects _care_ about these two women?”

 

***

 

“Welcome to Starbucks,” says the wench in black-and-green. “Would you like to try a Mocha Cookie Crumble Frappuccino today?”

Thor glances at Darcy Lewis. ”Yup, he’ll take one of those,” she says without asking for further clarification, and Thor thanks the heavens once more that he and his brother were blessed with the good fortune to meet someone so wise. “Venti, extra shot, and extra crumble on top. And I’ll have an iced hazelnut macchiato, venti, also extra shot, extra pump of caramel. Oh, and whipped cream. It’s okay that it’s on ice, I don’t care, the whipped cream is awesome. Yo, Jane, what do you want?”

“Something with lots of caffeine,” Jane Foster calls from their table. “No sugar.”

“Cool. She’ll take a doppio Americano. Not too much water. I know this is all a pain in the ass, but we’re awesome tippers, I swear. Well, I am anyway, and I’ve got the cash.”

The Starbucks wench is writing furiously across paper mugs. “And for you, sir?”

“Coffee,” says Loki.

 

***

 

“Define ‘care’.” Dion is pretty damn sure he knows what Rumlow means, and he doesn’t like it. Rumlow’s the guy who gets called in when things are going south. He and Hakim spent two months on this detail, and while the subjects should have a few broken ribs and lost teeth themselves, that doesn’t mean the people around them deserve the kind of mess S.T.R.I.K.E. tend to leave behind.

Rumlow taps a finger against the table. Twice. “Don’t dance around, agents. Fury’s given me a lot to do and not a lot of time to do it.”

“Yes,” says Hakim. Something _feels_ strange here, but her instincts have been off since she left the field, and she’s been with S.H.I.E.L.D. since the day she graduated from the academy. “The subjects care about the scientist and the intern.”

“And each other.”

“Yes, sir.”

“And would the subjects be dangerous should the women be—”

“What?” interrupts Dion. “Threatened?”

“Questioned,” says Rumlow.

 _Questioned_ , coming from his mouth, sounds even worse than _threatened_.

“Yes,” says Hakim. “Very dangerous. More than you realize.”

“They’re still human, Agent Hakim.”

“Depends on who you ask. Sir.”

 

***

 

“And would you like a light roast, a medium roast, or a dark roast, sir? Today’s dark is the Sumatra, and it’s particularly good.”

Loki blinks. “Coffee,” he repeats.

“Let’s go with the medium roast, then. And would that be a tall, grande, or venti?”

“None. I want coffee.”

“Yes, sir, but I need a size.”

“Enough to fill the mug.”

“…venti it is. Would you like room for cream and sugar?”

“Are you incapable of understanding a simple order, you insignificant—”

Darcy Lewis leans around the opposite end of the bar and gives Thor a meaningful look; Thor, understanding perfectly, takes Loki by the arm and steers him away. “I’m certain the wench comprehends your request, brother,” he says soothingly.

“I doubt that very much. _Why_ have we traveled such a great distance for a beverage we can create in the laboratory kitchen?”

“A question better posed elsewhere.” Thor pushes Loki in Jane Foster’s direction without a single regret. A consort’s role (among many) is to pacify the sour moods of her lover. Let her manage his brother during one of his poor humors.

And sure enough, the moment Loki sits down he begins to voice his complaints, in what appears to be great detail. Jane Foster only pats his arm with one hand and continues to make notes with the other — but Loki seems mollified by this, and then he is reading over her shoulder, making comments, and the vigorous discussion that follows indicates his stresses are forgotten.

Thor finds their relationship to be a bit mystifying, but if his brother is content, he will defend it to any and all who would raise opposition.

Darcy, meanwhile, has dropped several bills of currency into a glass bowl. “Sorry about that,” she tells the Starbucks wench.

“We get it a lot,” the wench replies.

“By the way, throw a shot in his, too.”

 

***

 

“And the rest of the Puente Antiguo residents?” asks Rumlow. “Are the subjects on good terms with them?”

Dion and Hakim glance at each other.

 

***

 

“We must bring these to the women Fernanda and Isabella.” Thor clears a shelf of bagged beans into a small basket. “Their establishments will greatly benefit.”

“Yeah, okay, that’s going to be outside of our price range.” Darcy Lewis takes the basket from him. “We’ll get a couple, though. We kind of owe them a lot of favors. And  _yes_ , Jane, this one’s on me. My mom wired me some cash.”

“That’s nice,” says Jane Foster, not noticing as Loki reaches for — and finishes — her Americano. “Is my spectrum analyzer in the back of the van?”

Thor can’t stop bouncing on the balls of his feet. The frozen coffee beverage ought to be brought to the battlefield; he feels as if he could run across the whole of Nornheim without pausing even to breathe. Midgard can truly be astounding. “Brother,” he says, “how long has it been since we sparred?”

Loki’s fingers are beating a frantic rhythm against the tabletop. “Too long,” he replies.

“The lot, then?”

“Indeed.”

As they head outside to fight for what Thor expects will be at least two hours, he hears Darcy Lewis say: “I _knew_ this would be cool.”

 

***

 

In the end, Dion and Hakim answer Rumlow’s questions in full. They’re all agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. What they have to do isn’t always pretty, but it still has to be done. They’re the good guys.

But something doesn’t feel right.

At the end of the day, hours after Rumlow has left, Dion says: “Do you think Coulson's been briefed about this?”

“It’s his assignment.”

“Yeah, but… do you think he knows?”

Hakim’s already reaching for the phone. “Let’s find out,” she says.  
  
  
  
  



	27. Wherein no good ever comes from phone calls.

**If you’ve seen Only Lovers Left Alive, you’ll recognize sleeping!Loki as rather similar to Adam when people are trying to get him out of bed:**

****

**And if you haven’t seen Only Lovers Left Alive, you need to fix that right away. Fic can wait.**

**By the way, everyone’s heard this cover of[Bad Moon Rising](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1ZgCmnRzBJk), right? Good.**

 

 

 _Wherein no good ever comes from phone calls. (Drama. PG-13.)_  
  
  
  
  
Selvig had for many years considered himself a learned man. He was one of the most respected theoretical astrophysicist in the world. He’d taught at university for decades, done his own groundbreaking research, mentored students who grew to become experts in their own right. He’d been published more times than he could count; he’d been called in on more projects than he cared to remember. He could say, without hubris, that he was, in fact, a genius.

Or so he’d thought.

Now, he understands that he knew _nothing_. Under the sands of the Mojave Desert, Doctor Erik Selvig is not afraid to admit his own ignorance. Everything he’d ever believed was but a snowflake on the tip of an iceberg that stretched fathoms deep and brushed the ocean floor.

The cube is telling him so much.

She is more than knowledge.

She is _truth_.

But there are those who doubt. Who are against progress. And who — even as Erik uses her to replicate the portable energy sources nearly perfected in the forties, energy sources that could bring unlimited power to all mankind — would do _anything_ to see the cube’s potential buried for all time. Including hurt those who would utilize the cube’s wisdom.

There is a covert society inside S.H.I.E.L.D., he comes to discover. The _true_ agents tell him of it, and cube confirms the truth, as she always does. The organization within the organization is a danger to them all. To the world itself.

And to Jane Foster.

Thank God Agent Rumlow, who came to the mission facility and lifted the wool from his eyes, is able to slip him the first mobile phone Erik has been given in months.

 

***

 

“With all due respect, sir, this is my operation.”

_“With all due respect, Coulson, I don’t give a shit. The data your team is sending in looks just like the spikes we’re getting in the Western Division. People who are a lot smarter than I am are saying there’s a connection.”_

Coulson shifts the phone against his ear and walks away from the wall of input displays. He would, and does, trust Nick Fury with his life — but he doesn’t like this. And he doesn’t like that he heard about it from Hakim and Dion instead of Fury himself. “I’m not convinced the subjects know about anything connected to Project P.E.G.A.S.U.S.”

_“Well, Pierce says it’s time to find out for sure, and I agree. We’re flying blind on this cube thing and you know how I feel about that. I want answers before the Council makes some stupid-ass decision to use Selvig’s research without knowing how it works.”_

The day Coulson arrived in New Mexico and tried to confiscate Doctor Foster’s data, the subject known as Loki had convinced him to change his mind — not because of the _substance_ of his arguments, but because he’d had so much success at the _persuasion_. Coulson’s agents had been nodding as though every word out of Loki’s mouth made perfect sense; it was enough to tell him that these were people best observed from a distance. And any doubts he had on that score were eradicated a few weeks after, when the subject known as Thor broke into the compound and tried to take the hammer. The brief questioning afterwards had been utterly fruitless; when the intern Darcy Lewis arrived to retrieve Thor with an obvious lie about drunken bets, Coulson let them go and ordered a stakeout instead. Covert surveillance isn’t a fast or flashy way to gather intelligence, but it gets the job done.

That being said, Coulson’s not naive. He’s been with S.H.I.E.L.D. for more than half of his life; he knows the methods by which the agency extracts information when it’s in a hurry. One way or another, they find out what they need to know.

Which is fine. When it’s successful.

It won’t be successful here.

“Again,” Coulson continues, “with all due respect, I believe threatening these subjects will change a frustrating situation to an unstable one.”

_“What do you propose we do, then? Bring them some Girl Scout cookies and say ‘pretty please will you tell us why you’re throwing off the same energy signals as a radioactive space cube _’_? That didn’t go very well for you the first few times.”_

“There’s a place between asking nicely and a visit from S.T.R.I.K.E.”

_“Can you find it, Agent Coulson?”_

“I can.” _And Rumlow can’t_ is left unsaid.

After a moment, there’s a long sigh on the other end of the line.  _“S.T.R.I.K.E. will be joining the party around oh-nine-hundred tomorrow,”_ says Fury. _“You have until eight-forty-five.”_

“Thank you, sir.”

_“You’re welcome. Don’t fuck up.”_

 

***

 

All S.H.I.E.L.D. calls are recorded.

 

***

 

Jane’s dreams are interrupted by the vibration of her Android across the dresser. When she tries to sit up, Loki (wedged between her and the trailer wall because that’s where they passed out) stirs just enough to reach over and tuck her against his side — and when Jane sees the clock, she’s tempted to ignore the ringing and go back to sleep.

Still, no one calls at four AM unless it’s an emergency. “Let go,” she says. “I have to get that.”

Without opening his eyes, he twists his fingers in the direction of the dresser. Nothing happens, but it gives Jane the freedom to squirm out of his embrace and grab the phone. “Hello?” she mumbles through a mouth that feels like it’s stuffed with cotton.

_“Janie.”_

Jane sits up so fast she nearly falls out of bed. “Erik? Is that you?”

_“Janie. Thank goodness.”_

Erik hasn’t called her _Janie_ since she was twelve. “Oh, my God. Where _are_ you? Are you okay? I’ve been calling for _months!_ ”

(Loki groans and pulls a pillow over his head. Now that he’s finally gotten into the habit of sleeping, he does not take well to being woken up. Ever.)

_“I’m on a project. I can’t tell you where I am.”_

“Private non-disclosure?”

 _“Government classified. At the highest levels. This is_ big _, Janie. Really big.”_

“It can’t be as big as what I’m working on. I’ve finally cracked the Einstein-Rosen equations! Loki and Thor—”

But Erik just shushes her. His next words are both muffled and echoed; he’s covering his mouth and the receiver with his hand. _“Janie, don’t stay another word. This line is secure, but it won’t be for long. Someone could be listening even now, do you understand?”_

Jane can read the meaning behind numbers, but not inflection; still, it doesn’t take a particularly empathetic person to hear the strain and shake in her mentor’s voice. “Erik, what’s going on?”

_“I don’t have much time. You’re in danger. There are people who don’t want your research to ever see the light of day.”_

“I know, I know. Those S.H.I.E.L.D. creeps are still out in the desert with Thor’s hammer. _And_ they shot Loki.”

At the sound of his name, Loki stirs a little. Jane tosses the pillow aside and shakes his shoulder a few times; he just grumbles and slaps her hand away. Yeesh.

_“They’ll do worse than that.”_

“Erik—”

 _“No, listen. Parts of S.H.I.E.L.D. are good. They want to help people. They want to put the world back on the right course. They care about the_ work _. But there are others — there’s a secret cult — they can’t be trusted—”_ His words turn loose, scattered. _“You’ve gotten too close, Janie. They’re coming for you.”_

“ _Who_ is?”

 _“Agent Coulson and his team,”_ says Erik. _“He’s going to try to convince you that he’s on your side and he’s just trying to help you, but you_ can’t trust him, _Janie, do you understand? Don’t answer his questions, don’t go anywhere with him, and don’t believe anything he says.”_

It’s four in the morning and, somewhere between dead tired and high on a sudden adrenaline rush, Jane wonders if she’s dreaming this whole conversation. “Erik, you’re scaring me.”

At this, Loki finally opens his eyes.

_“There’s a man on the way named Brock Rumlow. He’s with S.H.I.E.L.D., but he’s one of the good guys. He’ll protect you. I promise. He’ll get you out of there.”_

“But I _can’t_ leave! All my data says the bridge is due to open—”

_“It doesn’t matter, Janie. None of it matters now. All that matters is the cube.”_

“Cube? What cube?”

 _“You’ll see. She’ll show you things you never imagined.”_ There’s another series of muffled noises in the background. _“I have to go. There’s so much work to do.”_

“Wait, no, you can’t—”

 _“I’ll see you soon, Janie.”_ And Erik hangs up.

Loki definitely looks awake now. “What has frightened you, Jane Foster?”

She’s already reaching for her pants. “I think,” she tells him, “we’re in some trouble.”

 

 

 


	28. Wherein Sitwell gets a visitor and Darcy doesn't get cookies.

**Our banished!Odinsons and certain unpleasant elements continue to intersect. We’re now at the point where I hope everyone’s seen Winter Soldier, because otherwise things are going to get a little confusing and/or spoiler-y.**

 

_Wherein Sitwell gets a visitor and Darcy doesn't get cookies. (Humor/Drama. PG-13.)_  
  
  
  
  
When Darcy was shaken awake at a completely unfair hour to a torrent of babbled conspiracy theories, she figured Jane was overreacting. It wouldn’t be the first time. Jane’s an overreacting type. (Then again, from Darcy’s perspective, everyone’s an overreacting type. Just wait; they’ll all worry themselves into early graves while she’ll be a hundred and ten years old and still going strong.) Still, she got out of bed and made the coffee like a good little intern (and ignored the disgusted expressions from the now-spoiled pets as they sipped their Folgers); The sun had risen before she was awake enough to follow what they were all saying, but before she could say  _You guys need meds_ , the Man-In-Black car pulled up, and out popped the very person Erik had supposedly warned Jane about.

So, Darcy was wrong.

It _does_ happen sometimes.

“I’m not asking you to trust me, Miss Foster—“

“ _Doctor_ Foster. And yes, you are.”

“—but whether you believe me or not, I’m trying to help you.”

“By asking us to give you our research and submit to—” Jane turns to Loki, very sarcastically “—what did he call them? ‘Voluntary interviews’?”

“I believe that was the term,” replies Loki, just as dry as her. (They’re a really weird pair, and look it even more when Loki’s in his suit and Jane’s still wearing cotton pajamas, but they can both _do_ the snotty intellectual thing.)

His words are punctuated by a loud thump and a series of scrapes. One of the lawnchairs slides into view and tilts crazily over the edge of the roof; Agent Coulson sidesteps as it crashes to the ground.

It’s kind of disturbing how _not_ disturbed everyone is by what’s apparently a full-fledged battle going on twelve feet above their heads. But Darcy’s not that worried about Thor’s ability to handle himself. He’s pretty badass when he wants to be.

Agent Coulson sighs. Darcy almost feels sorry for him and the way he’s trying to talk through the locked front door. “Your friend isn’t helping the situation,” he says.

“Well, maybe you shouldn’t have put _your_ friend on top of _my_ lab.”

“Standard precautionary measure. Shouting through glass isn’t going to get us anywhere. May I come in?”

Jane crosses her arms. “Do you have a gun on you?”

“Yes.”

“Leave it outside.”

“No.”

“Then you can’t come in.”

“Doctor Foster, your walls aren’t exactly bulletproof. Which side of the door I’m on makes no difference to a Glock 22.”

“Yeah, _that_ makes me want to trust you.”

Loki moves just a little bit in front of Jane; Darcy wonders if that steak knife he’s got up his sleeve is scratching him. From what she’s seen, she’d guess God-With-A-Knife is a pretty close match for Agent-With-A-Gun, but it would suck if someone got shot today. Loki was cranky enough about it last time. “We may deign to answer a few of your questions — if you choose to answer a few of ours. Tell us what has become of Erik Selvig.”

“I’m not at liberty to discuss Doctor Selvig’s whereabouts at this time,” says Coulson. “And S.H.I.E.L.D. doesn’t do _quid pro quo_.”

Loki glances at Darcy (which, she has to admit, is pretty gratifying). “Latin,” she tells him. “Means ‘something for something’. He’s telling you to fuck off.”

“Ah.”

There’s a familiar roar above them, followed by a whole lot of swearing. A bow — _huh?_ — sails through the air to nearly hit the side of Jane’s trailer.

Coulson raises an eyebrow and looks up. “Problems?” he calls.

“Nope!” someone who is not Thor yells back. “Totally under control!”

Darcy pulls out her taser. “The ceiling’s made of metal,” she says. “Think I should zap it?”

_“No,”_ snap three voices simultaneously.

Geez.

 

***

 

As the S.T.R.I.K.E. team spreads through the research base, Jasper Sitwell’s meeting with Brock Rumlow takes place well past the perimeter fence and out into the dry morning air. They’re just two colleagues taking a walk before the daily grind gets going. Nothing anyone will comment on.

Sitwell’s very good at carrying out his business in ways no one will comment on.

“All right,” he says once they’re a satisfactory distance away. “How involved is Fury?”

“A lot less than he thinks.” Rumlow squints out at the endless expanse of dirt and dust. “Have you really been stuck in this hellhole for three months?”

“Yes. I missed Game of Thrones and everything.”

“Damn.”

“I know. I’d started to think Pierce forgot about us. What changed? Why the sudden rush?”

Rumlow spits on a nearby rock. They’re both members of the most powerful secret society in the history of mankind, but that doesn’t blind Sitwell to the fact that Rumlow isn’t what one would call ‘classy’. “Official story? The cube’s been linked to all that spooky data you’ve been collecting, and the bosses want to know why before they proceed with P.E.G.A.S.U.S.”

“Real story?”

“Phase Two’s pretty much done, but there’s been some big breakthrough in one of the other research departments, so the talk is all genetics all the time. Von Strucker got wind of your subjects and wants to play with them; rumor has it he got extra-excited when he heard they were siblings.”

Sitwell grimaces. Von Strucker is as creepy as they come. “I hate being out of the loop. What are the orders?”

“Bring everyone in. The brothers go to von Strucker. Western Division wants the scientist, since Selvig’s starting to melt down. And if we get the intern she’ll be a bonus for leverage.”

“I don’t like it when you say _if_.”

“Just hedging my bets. You never know who you’ll lose in the crossfire.”

 

***

 

“Look,” says Coulson, “I’m trying to do you a favor. You could have killed my agents in Albuquerque, and you didn’t. I appreciate that.”

“Your gratitude rightfully belongs my brother and his moronic bout of mercy. Had I not been wounded, I would have slit their throats.”

A pause. “Be that as it may, I can promise you that one way or another you _will_ give us the information we’re looking for. The people who give the orders are out of patience. When they’re out of patience, they don’t ask nicely the way I do.”

“You call _this_ asking nicely?”

“Doctor Foster, I’m as nice as they come. I even thought very seriously about bringing Girl Scout cookies.”

Darcy perks up. “I didn’t even know they _had_ a Girl Scout troop in town.”

“As it turns out, they don’t.”

Damn. “Then why did you get our hopes up like that?”

The second lawnchair falls in a twisted mess of metal. “Your research is unprecedented, Doctor Foster—”

“I know that.”

“—and I’m aware that you intend to open a portal that may prove dangerous to mankind as a whole.”

“It won’t be dangerous! And an Einstein-Rosen bridge doesn’t _open_ or _close_ , it _moves_. I’m just extrapolating its locations.”

Loki glances at Jane and makes a very distinct scoffing noise; Darcy’s heard this argument of theirs so many times she could write her own dissertation. But all he says is: “The Bifrost inflicts no harm upon your realm. Not when managed skillfully.”

“If you _do_ manage it skillfully, _and_ don’t make a habit out of it, where you take your vacations will not be at the top of S.H.I.E.L.D.’s very, _very_ long priority list. Just as long as we get what we need before you depart.” Darcy cringes back as he reaches into his suit (so does Jane, and even Loki) — but he only pulls out a photograph, which he slaps against the glass. “I want to know more about _this_.”

_This_ is a picture of a glowing box hooked up to a whole lot of wires.

“Looks like Photoshop,” Darcy says skeptically.

“Is that gamma radiation?” Jane frowns. “Even if I _wanted_ to help you, which I don’t, thermonuclear dynamics isn’t my field of—”

“Respectfully, Doctor Foster, it’s not your help we’re after.” Coulson turns to Loki, who is staring at the photo and looking as flabbergasted as Darcy has ever seen him, even more so than when she explained about MechaHitler during Cards Against Humanity. “Are you familiar with this object, sir?”

Loki speechless is a kind of awesome, if vaguely terrifying, sight. After a moment of complete silence he walks forward, slams open the front doors so hard that Coulson has to leap backwards to keep from getting a broken nose, spins on his heel, and shouts to the sky: _“Brother! Cease that idiotic combat! These fools have the lost Tesseract!”_

There’s a bellow of surprise, a word Darcy’s never heard before but is _definitely_ some kind of Asgardian curse, and then a series of thumps and scrapes as Thor and another man roll off the edge of the roof — still fighting — and fall into the side yard with a thump.

“I’ll take that as a ‘yes’,” says Coulson. “Barton?”

The other guy winces as he gets to his knees. “I work better from a distance,” he groans, coughing. “Almost had him, though.”

“You fought valiantly,” says Thor as Loki walks over and (rolling his eyes) helps him up. He’s got a solid black eye forming and makes a face as he rubs his shoulder. “For that you have my respect, despite your Cigarette-Smoking Man efforts to intimidate and suppress.”

Did he just— “You made an X-Files reference!” exclaims Darcy, beaming with pride. “That is so awesome!”

“The truth is out there,” says Thor. “Now, what is this of my father’s Infinity Stone?”

 

***

 

The wind shifts; Sitwell sneezes as the smoke blows their way. New Mexico hasn’t been kind to his sinuses. “This is going to be hard to explain to the Council,” he says, reaching for a handkerchief.

“That hammer of yours has been throwing off weirder and weirder shit,” replies Rumlow. “The Triskelion will get readings about a huge energy wave wiping everything out, and the report will show it was caused by the hammer itself.”

“Fury’s not going to buy it.”

“Pierce can handle Fury.”

“Still, those were decent men.”

“They knew too much. Nothing personal.”

True. “You’ll have to deal with Coulson and Barton too, you know.”

“Yeah, we’ll get them along with the rest of the town.” Rumlow sighs. “Shame; I always liked Barton. You want to come with, or should I pick you up once we’re done?”

Sitwell’s skill set isn’t suited for Rumlow’s part of the game. “I’ll stay and get rid of whatever’s left.” From here, the now smoldering crater where the research base used to sit looks pretty well destroyed, but flash drives have a way of surviving even the best salted earth campaign.

“Good man.” Rumlow claps him on the shoulder hard enough to bruise as they head to where the S.T.R.I.K.E. team is re-holstering their Phase Two weapons. “See you on the other side. Hail HYDRA.”

“Hail HYDRA.”

 

 

 


	29. Wherein Loki gets slapped and most people are heavily armed.

**We’re barreling towards the end now, folks. Not sure exactly how many posts are left (being as they are drabbles and all), but I’ll give a warning at the penultimate.**

**Also, I’m pretty sure I’ll never write a Lokane fic that doesn’t involve Jane smacking Loki. It’s just too iconic.**  
  


 

 

_Wherein Loki gets slapped and most people are heavily armed. (Drama. PG-13.)_

  
  
  
Fernanda and Isabella, as the respective owners of the two (out of five) most successful eating establishments in Puente Antiguo, have a certain understanding. This understanding is primarily founded upon the fact that they don’t compete with one another; Izzy serves pancakes and coffee from five AM to three PM, and Fern serves pretzels and beer from five PM to three AM. Works out great. Everyone’s happy.

Correction: everyone’s happy as long as _no one bothers Fern before noon._

So she can be forgiven for growling “This better be good” into the phone when Izzy — with whom she’s usually on such good terms — decides to call at the ungodly hour of nine-thirty.

_“Fern. Did I wake you?”_

Of all the— “What do you think,  _quedada_?”

_“There’s no need to be rude.”_

“The hell there isn’t. _¿Que carajo quieres?_ ”

_“Can you take a look out your window?”_

The apocalypse had better be going down out there. Fern gets out of bed, untangles herself from the phone cord with a series of curses (yes, she still has a rotary, sue her), and peeks out of the blackout curtains. Her condo above the bar gives her a nice view of the street — and, incidentally, of Jane Foster’s lab.

That’s a lot of guns.

“Looks someone’s here for the batshit brothers,” she comments, frowning.

_“How many cops do you see?”_

“I don’t think they’re cops.”

_“You know what I mean. How many?”_

Fern does a quick headcount. “Seven. Five look like they’re invading Iraq.” The most heavily-armed one is talking with the balding guy in shades. The porn stars are having some kind of fight. Thor and Darcy look like they’re about to come to blows. Fern’d like to know what’s being said, but unfortunately conversations don’t carry as well the sounds of sex.

And is that other _rulacho_ actually carrying a _bow_?

_“Right. Can you see behind my place from where you are?”_

“Yeah, _un momento_.” She leaves the receiver on the nightstand, walks down the hall, enters the bathroom, climbs into the tub, pushes the shower curtain aside, and opens the window. Perfect view down the alley.

And, for that matter, of the people  _in_ the alley.

_Puta madre._

 

***

 

“We’re not going with them.” Jane’s trying to keep her voice down, but she’s not succeeding very well; luckily, everyone here is bickering enough that theirs just kind of blends into the mix. “Not with Coulson, not with Rumlow, not with anybody. Not when there’s an anomaly on the horizon.” Finally — _finally_ — her algorithms are all consistent; an Einstein-Rosen bridge will be appearing soon. Very soon. She is absolutely _not_ abandoning her research now.

She would have thought Loki would be with her on this.

“They have an Infinity Stone, Jane Foster; with it, we won’t _need_ the Bifrost.”

“That’s not possible. There’s no _rock_ that can rip a hole through space.”

“I assure you, there is.” Loki’s eyes are feverish; he’s been striding around like a maniac since Coulson showed him the pictures of whatever this _thing_ is. He barely even noticed when the armed-to-the-teeth agents showed up. “Father lost the tesseract a thousand years ago. Had he known it was in the mortals’ possession— We will return it to him, Jane Foster. And when we do, he will forgive my brother and I for our transgressions and restore our powers to us. It must have been what he wanted all along.”

That doesn’t sound right to Jane at all. “So, what? You’ll just go off with these creeps? That’s what Erik did, and he never came back! You can’t trust them!”

“I do not trust them, Jane Foster, but neither do I fear them.”

“Then you’re an _idiot!_ ” Loki hisses at this, but Jane barrels on: “Have you _seen_ those guns? They’re practically cannons!”

“We will take the stone and then leave them behind. You need fear nothing; I will keep you safe.”

“No, you won’t, because I’m not going!”

“Do you imagine I would _allow_ you to stay, Jane Foster? You’re _mine_.”

The crack of Jane’s hand against Loki’s face temporarily silences all the arguments going on around them.

Loki stares at her in disbelief as his ice-white cheek turns red. Thor winces; Darcy whistles low under her breath, and everyone else looks away politely.

Jane doesn’t know exactly what to say; she’s never hit someone before. Not like  _that_ , anyway. And it doesn’t look like anyone’s hit  _him_ like that, either.

Maybe someone should have, before now. Maybe he wouldn’t be so fucking egotistical and possessive and generally asshole-ish if they had.

But maybe not.

It doesn’t matter.

All Jane can think to do is grab Loki by the sleeve and pull him over to her work table. She’ll apologize later; her guilt won’t matter if he gets in the back of a black government sedan and she never sees him again.  “Please,” she says under her breath. “ _Please_. We’re so close. Whatever this cube thing is, we don’t need it. Everything we need is _here_.” She points at the papers, the graphs, the reams of data that are the result of three and a half years of her life. “Don’t trust them. Trust this. I promise, I’m going to get you home.”

Loki glances down at a photograph of the night sky. “And if you do, then what?” he says quietly. “Father would banish us again. I would still be without magic. Thor would still be without Mjolnir.”

“You were okay with that an hour ago!”

“Because I believed there would be no other option. _This_ is what I must do, Jane Foster. I will retrieve the tesseract, and prove myself a worthy son of Odin.” His left hand flexes. “And I would have you join me… if you please.”

So, here they are. Loki, or her research. A crazy alien she’s only known a few months, or everything she’s spent her life working towards.

It amazes her how hard a decision it actually is.

“No,” Jane finally says. She steps away from him, putting her hand on her spectrometer to steady herself, just in case she forgets _why_. “Go if you want, but I’m not coming with you.”

 

***

 

There’s a reason Clint picked up the name ‘Hawkeye’. Even stuck in the middle of a bunch of domestic fights after taking a beating from a Rock of Ages reject, he notices things no one else generally does. It’s how he’s stayed alive as long as he has.

For instance, he notices that Loki looks like someone just killed his puppy. He notices that Coulson (even though his expression is still bland and his argument with Rumlow has all the appearance of cordial disagreement) has flicked the safety off his holstered gun. He notices that the other agents have ash on their uniforms.

Also, he notices there’s movement in the alley across the street.

Aw, shit.

 

***

 

Rumlow turns away from Coulson before things start to get ugly (too quickly, that is) and speaks directly to his targets. “It’s time to go,” he tells them. “Get into the cars, please.”

“We will join you if you give your solemn word that we are to see the tesseract,” says the blond one — Thor. “At once.”

“That’s the plan.”

The brothers step forward.

Darcy Lewis just crosses her arms mutinously. “Nope,” she says. “Not until you give us back Erik. One of those hostage trades or whatever.” Thor touches her shoulder, she shrugs him off. “Don’t even. I can’t believe you’re falling for this.”

“We _must_ go. Mortals have no notion of the true power of the tesseract. By this course of action, we will protect the entire realm.”

“Yeah, delusions of grandeur are _totally_ what we need.”

Jane Foster doesn’t say anything. She just curls her hands around the edge of her table, protecting the stuff on it like S.T.R.I.K.E.’s weapons can’t cut through her five-foot-two body like butter.

Rumlow sighs. He’d hoped the call from Selvig would smooth the way more than this; in spite of his reputation, he never _wants_ things to turn south. But someone’s got to be in charge of the dirty work, and, like it or not, that’s him. “S.H.I.E.L.D. is not issuing a request,” he says to Foster and Lewis. “This is your last chance to comply before we begin with the persuasion.”

Sunglasses block Coulson’s expression, but anyone who knows him would recognize the tiny change in his stance. “I have trouble believing Director Fury authorized Phase Two-level ‘persuasion’, Agent Rumlow.”

“You can call Fury when we reach the base.” Coulson won’t reach the base. “For now—”

Three things happen at once.

First: Someone across the street screams.

Second: Barton, bow notched in the blink of an eye, shouts, _“Coulson! One o’clock, weapons aimed at civilian residences!”_

Third: All the equipment in Foster’s laboratory goes off in an explosion of flashing lights and ear-piercing beeps.

Yup. Gonna be one of those days. “Delta team,” Rumlow says into his earpiece, “move in.”

 

***

 

The guard can barely breathe by the time he drops to his knees before the throne. It’s a long run from the Bifrost to the Palace. “My Queen,” he gasps, “I bring a message from the Gatekeeper. He wishes to inform you that the Princes are in danger.”

The tap of Gungnir against the stone floor echoes through the entire hall. “Then you may tell the Lady Sif,” the Queen says, “that her request is granted at last.”

“Yes, my Queen.”

“And guard?”

“Yes, my Queen?”

“Tell her my sons — _both_ of my sons — are to be retrieved. At any cost. If not, Midgard shall learn the wrath of the All-Father can pale in comparison to my own.”

“Yes, my Queen.”

 

 

 


	30. Wherein Puente Antiguo fights back (sort of) and there are a few standoffs.

**My goodness, but our boys like to spend their time in the midst of clusterfucks.**  
  


 

_Wherein Puente Antiguo fights back (sort of) and there are a few standoffs. (Drama. R.)_

  
  
  
  
  
One of the Phase Two weapons, fueled by the harnessed power of an Infinity Stone and brought to Puente Antiguo for the express purpose of razing the town into the desert sand, is lifted by a member of HYDRA embedded within the S.H.I.E.L.D. S.T.R.I.K.E. team, aimed, and fired into the business directly across Main Street.

A blast of energy shatters a window and blows a hole the size of a bowling ball through a Slurpee machine.

Behind the counter, the 7-11 cashier narrows his eyes.

Moments later the HYDRA agent is ducking shotgun blasts.

 

***

 

When Isabella’s goes up in flames, the screams of the trapped people inside echo through the nearby buildings.

Chester has never held a gun in his life. Wouldn’t know what do to with one if he had it.

But goddamn if he isn’t handy with a gas-powered chainsaw.

 

***

 

“You moron!” Cherry Beth shouts over yet another explosion, struggling to keep the lid on a box of ginger kittens (and one very confused chihuahua puppy). “They’re not going to fit!”

Kyle doesn’t pause as he stuffs another parakeet into a fluttering pillowcase. “It works on chickens!”

“These aren’t chickens! And what do you care? You’re not even supposed to be here today!”

“Are you going to help or not?”

Unconcerned with the chaos, a boa constrictor slides out the front door of the pet shop and winds serenely down the sidewalk.

 

***

 

Rumlow has a gift for making quick assessments, which is one of the primary reasons he is the leader of this S.T.R.I.K.E. team instead of someone else.

Coulson is crouched behind his sedan, shouting into a phone, no doubt trying to raise his now non-existent base out in the desert. He’s not a priority for now.

The brothers are doing well against the team, considering they’re armed respectively with a kitchen knife and a pipe ripped off a lawn chair; Rumlow can see why von Strucker wants them so badly. They need to be neutralized before they cause any more damage.

Barton’s climbed up onto the roof of the laboratory and his damned arrows are wreaking havoc on the most distant agents. Rumlow has to take care of that ASAP.

The town is looking pretty FUBARed altogether.

Conclusion: the quickest way to regain control of the situation is the old-fashioned one.

The equipment in the lab is going off like they’re in a penny arcade; ducking the confusion, Jane Foster runs from computer screen to computer screen, referencing a tattered notebook in her hands, typing commands and slamming switches, shouting nonsense at the machines like they can understand her.

Scientists.

Rumlow grabs Foster by the hair and yanks her away from the charts hard enough to feel her scalp pull, then uses the momentum to slam her to the concrete floor.

She screams in pain.

That is enough to get Loki’s attention. He breaks off his fight, leaving Thor to deal with four agents alone (which he seems to be handling just fine). But before he can attack with that surprisingly effective kitchen knife, Rumlow presses the barrel of his gun to the base of Foster’s skull.

The woman freezes in the act of trying to rise.

Loki pulls up short.

That interview with Hakim and Dion was _definitely_ the right move.

“Tell Thor to stand down,” Rumlow tells him, “and get in the car.”

Loki’s eyes are darting from Rumlow, to the gun, to Foster, and back again in quick succession; his voice is even and conversational as he says: “You speak as though one can pull the God of Thunder from battle as one calls off a hound. You’ve clearly not met my brother.”

“If you come with us now, we’ll go and we’ll leave the people alone. This doesn’t have to get any messier.”

“Of course it does. You’ve come too far for anything else.”

There’s a rush of heat as the gas station bursts into flames three blocks away. Foster makes a choked noise of horror. “You son of a—”

Rumlow smacks the side of her temple with the gun — just hard enough to stun her half-unconscious. She falls to her side, dazed, and clutches her notebook to her chest for dear life. “Listen up,” he says to Loki, whose placid expression hasn’t wavered. “Your girlfriend here has a nice place waiting for her with all the science-y techno shit she could ask for. My superiors don’t want me to blow her brains all over her data — but I’ll take the write-up if I have to. Now drop the knife.”

“I would not sacrifice my freedom for a mere Midgardian.”

“I hear otherwise.”

Loki scoffs. “She’s shrewish, temperamental, and disloyal. Do you think that because she warmed my bed I would fall fit to such base sentimentality?”

A bunch of Vikings worshiped this guy as a trickster, but Rumlow’s been living and breathing deception since his father would tuck him into bed, kiss his forehead, and whisper _hail HYDRA_ in place of _goodnight_.

He cocks the gun. “I’m going to count to three. One—”

Loki’s smirk remains in place.

“—two—”

Rumlow pulls Foster to her knees with another wrench of hair; she struggles feebly, eyes glassy. This is going to make a mess.

“—thr—”

The knife falls to the floor with a clatter.

Finally.

Rumlow keeps the Glock trained as Loki raises his hands slowly in the universal gesture of surrender. The calm mask is completely gone. “Lower your weapon,” he growls, “and do not touch her again.”

One of the agents fighting Thor flies through the air and slams into the glass window.

Rumlow lets go of Foster and shoves her forward. She catches herself on her hands and knees. “You and your brother get into the car,” he says. “I’ll take good care of your girlfriend, don’t worry.”

“You will die at my hand, mortal.”

“Empty threat.”

“I don’t threaten. And if she is returned to me in anything but pristine condition, it is your screams that will rip open your throat in place of my dagger.”

“Yeah, yeah.” Rumlow thumbs the safety back into place. “Just get your—”

He feels a twinge on his neck, and everything goes black.

 

***

 

It takes a moment before Coulson has a clear enough line of sight to take out one of the agents — one of the agents he thought was _his_ until eight minutes ago, when they started shooting at him — with a bullet to the head. He would have preferred an incapacitating hit to the leg (because if nothing else they need someone alive for questioning), but S.T.R.I.K.E. gets top-notch body armor. It wouldn’t have done a thing.

Down to three opponents, Thor continues to fight with a broken lawn chair, roaring and bleeding from a half-dozen wounds. Coulson’s never seen anything like it, not even when the guy broke into the compound.

Speaking of the compound, no one’s answering his hails. Coulson’s got a sinking feeling about that.

But one problem at a time. Puente Antiguo is going up in a series of detonations from weapons Coulson thought were still in R&D. “Barton?” he says into his earpiece. “How many are we talking about?”

_“More than I’ve got arrows for. Since when did Rumlow get an army?”_

“I intend to submit an inquiry about that.”

An agent bold enough to walk down the sidewalk of Main Street, shooting blasts of blue energy in every direction, staggers from a buckshot blast to his back — then trips over a giant snake — then gets hit by a guy with a chainsaw who leaps from the alley like Rambo.

Well, that’s one way to do it.

_“Coulson, unless you’ve got an unlimited supply of ammo in your trunk, you’d better get out of here.”_

This has occurred to Coulson. At the moment he’s more of a liability than anything else, in that he does _not_ , in fact, have an unlimited supply of ammo in his trunk. “Base’s communications are out,” he says, hoping against hope that that’s the only problem. “Clear my way, and I’ll go get backup.”

_“Roger that.”_

“Don’t get killed while I’m gone. That’s an order.”

_“Oh, well, now that you’ve told me.”_

Coulson’s in his car and praying the engine starts in spite of the bullet holes riddling the hood when, over the commotion, he hears more shouting to his side.

“This is where you say ‘Thank you, Darcy Lewis, for saving my ungrateful Asgardian butt!’”

“On the contrary, you ought to be flogged for taking so long!”

“I only had one shot!”

“And it required you a millennium to take it!”

“Of course it did! I wasn’t going to zap him while he was holding the gun to Jane’s head! She’d be just as dead if he pulled the trigger with all the twitching and jerking!”

Loki opens the passenger side door and unceremoniously shoves the intern in so hard she almost sprawls across Coulson’s lap. “If you don’t live long enough for me to give you a proper tongue-lashing,” he says spitefully, “I will be even angrier.”

“You’re welcome.” Darcy looks up at Coulson as she adjusts her glasses. “Hey. What the _fuck_ is going on?”

"If I knew," says Coulson, "I probably wouldn’t tell you."

Jane Foster, blood running down her temple and held up by Loki’s arm around her abdomen, gets much more gently deposited in the back seat. She’s awake, but clearly out of it. “Loki,” she mutters. “The bridge. The Rainbow Bridge. Loki, you promised—”

The theoretical god glances at Coulson in the rearview mirror. “Keep them alive,” he says, “and I will share everything I know.”

Coulson revs the engine. “You don’t have to bribe me to save lives,” he replies.

He’s five miles out of town (which he covered in two minutes — his S.H.I.E.L.D.-issued transportation is no Lola, but it’s not bad, either) when a bruised mess of swirling purple storm clouds forms from nowhere overhead.

“Okay,” says Darcy, admirably attempting to steady the shake in her voice, “that? Is weird.”

Wonderful.

 

 

 

 


	31. Wherein Loki makes a decision and things, believe it or not, become even more complicated.

**Yup, coming up on the end here. Drabble, my foot.**

 

 

_Wherein Loki makes a decision and things become, believe it or not, even more complicated. (Drama. PG-13.)_

 

 

 

Loki is not Thor; he doesn’t relish war the way his brother always has. That being said, _no one_ relishes war as Thor does, so it’s hardly indicative of Loki’s own propensities; he might not lose his head with bloodlust, but he’s not immune to the rage of battle. And if his skills were always overshone by Thor’s legendary prowess, well, it doesn’t mean Loki couldn’t match his blades against any other enemy in the nine realms. He and Thor were trained by the same masters.

In other words, even powerless and with only a kitchen knife and a rusted piece of piping to their respective names, the sons of Odin are able to dispatch their foes relatively quickly. Especially once Loki comes up from behind and slits their throats. (An old tactic of theirs; enemies focused on the huge, roaring golden prince and completely missed the shadow burying his blade in their backs. That was before Thor wanted always to land the killing blow, and before Loki would wait to the last possible moment to offer assistance. Now, it does not occur to Loki hold until Thor is desperate to come to his aid.)

When the last soldier falls, Thor rubs his forehead, leaving a smear of blood behind. “Thank you, brother,” he says.

Loki does not remember the last time he heard those words from Thor in battle. “You’re welcome,” he replies.

Thor grins.

Loki cannot but grin back.

“That’s great,” the man armed with the bow (at least  _some_ of the more elegant weapons have not gone out of style on Midgard) calls from the laboratory roof. “Glad you guys are having fun. So how ‘bout the rest of the town, huh?”

Loki and Thor turn to face the street.

The village of Puente Antiguo is in a state of chaos. The soldiers (who are  _not_ , it would seem, under direction of the son of Coul), lay waste to everything in their paths, using weapons that should be far beyond the reach of this insignificant realm. Loki has never seen the cube himself — it was lost around the time of his birth — but any scholar of the Infinity Stones would be able to recognize these surges of energy as originating from a singularity.

It’s true: the humans  _do_ have the tesseract. And they’ve found some way to harness it for their own purposes.

Fools.

“They know not what they meddle with,” Loki murmurs to Thor. To be honest — though Loki does not prize honesty — _he_ is not certain what they meddle with, either.

Thor only nods absently in response, scanning the tumult. “We must not engage the enemy directly,” he says (and Loki marvels that this is  _his brother_ who is speaking). “They are too many and too heavily armed.”

This is the same conclusion he had been reaching himself. “We must fall back.”

“No. I must get the people to safety.”

Loki stares in shock as Thor drops the pipe in his hand and pulls a baton from the belt of a fallen foe. “Are you mad?” he demands.

“They have sheltered us and protected us.”

“They have stared and mocked!”

“They are our  _friends_ , brother.” Thor watches as the supply store that sells thumbtacks blows apart in a blast of blue flame. There is no smile upon his face, only grim determination. It is so different than the last time they strode into combat. “They once looked to us as gods; how worthy are we of that title, if we do not protect them?”

“Their worshipping ancestors are a thousand years buried! We are  _human_ now, Thor! We owe them  _nothing_ , and you would march to your death for them?”

Who is this man, that Loki calls brother? Has he changed so much in this desolate realm?

Thor only claps him on the shoulder, then cups the back of his head in the embrace they have shared since children. “It is  _you_ who will leave,” he says to Loki. “Follow the son of Coul. Protect Darcy Lewis and Jane Foster.  _Someone_ must.”

“Brother—”

But Thor just shoves Loki away. “Go. Now.” A sad smile flits across his face. “Remember me well.”

And Thor turns and runs towards the burning buildings, screaming townsfolk, and Midgardian soldiers with their unholy weapons.

There were times in recent decades — dark, hollow times, full of swallowed rage and ever-more-brittle bitterness — that Loki believed he and Thor were destined to die by each others’ hands. But no: Thor is going to get himself killed for a bunch of mortals instead.

And Loki…

…Loki…

…Loki is going to get himself killed for Thor.

(He is never going to see Jane Foster again.)

“Provide as much cover as possible,” he shouts up to the bowman, testing the edge of his blade. Dull and nearly useless. “We will manage what we can before we stupidly waste our lives failing to save this town of primitive, ignorant, thoroughly unworthy ingrates.”

“That’s the spirit!” the bowman calls back.

For the thousandth time — and very possibly the last — the younger brother follows the elder onto the field of battle.

 

***

 

_“Barton? How’s it going?”_

Clint stops loosing arrows long enough to touch his earpiece. “I hope to God you’re sending help, Coulson.”

 _“Uh… in a manner of speaking.”_ Some kind of roar in the background, like Coulson’s standing in a wind tunnel.  _“Including the god part.”_

“Huh?”

_“Just do me a favor and don’t shoot the next group of people to arrive, no matter how hostile they seem. And keep the brothers alive, because there may be an intergalactic war if you don’t.”_

Clint watches as Thor and Loki rush headlong into a burning diner. “I’ll do what I can,” he says, “but no promises.”

 

***

 

As Coulson issues orders into his phone, Jane, head still spinning from the blow delivered by that jack-booted thug who started all of this, sits on the desert sand and stares at a waterfall of colors that crashes into the earth from God-knows-where.

An Einstein-Rosen bridge. Right in front of her eyes.

If only she had her equipment.

“I hope Thor’s friends bring back Coulson’s car when they’re done,” says Darcy, “or we’re pretty fucked. And I don’t think they know how to drive.”

Something is niggling at Jane. Something in the back of her scrambled mind.

Two minutes later, as the first of the tremors disturbs the ground beneath them, it comes to her.

Her calculations never had the bridge staying in one place for this long.  


 

 


	32. Wherein one calvary arrives and another departs.

**TheOtherOdinson: The W4 are riding to the rescue, in Coulson’s car, and they don’t know how to drive - omg, I love it! Please tell me Volstagg is driving. I picture Volstagg driving with Fandral in the backseat yelling “helpful” instructions.**  
  


 

_Wherein one calvary arrives and another departs. (Drama/Suspense. PG-13.)_

 

 

“You leave for a millennium and look at the state of the place,” says Volstagg, turning the circular reins (such as they are) of the mechanical beast which they ride. Dust sprays up in a gritty cloud as he does, and everyone slides to the left with a chorus of yelps. “But I’m getting better at this, don’t you think?”

Fandral — who believes he knows everything, just because he’s the one who drives the boats back home — makes a scoffing noise for which Volstagg will cuff him soundly once their rescue mission has been completed. “Use the pedal on the  _right_ ,” he insists. “You  _do_ know your right from your left, do you not?”

Volstagg briefly imagines the retribution he will wreak when the opportunity presents itself. Fandral’s pretty face will attract fewer lovers for at least a week afterwards. “The  _right_ pedal only angers the beast.”

“If it is angry,” offers Sif, “perhaps it will move faster.”

“It might  _also_ move faster if you stop thinking of it as a beast,” adds Fandral. “Preferring horses is no excuse for obsolete thinking.”

“ _Horses_ are an effective method of transport and have been for ten thousand years.”

“You’re growing old, Volstagg.”

“The All-Father uses a horse.”

“And that should make me think you young?”

“Would  _you_ rather drive?”

“Yes!”

Just to quiet him, Volstagg stamps his foot against the right pedal with all his strength, which will of course do nothing—

—to have them jerk forward across the desert sand with a roar from within the belly of the beast. Volstagg (who is  _not_ alarmed, he is  _not_ ) mashes frantically at the buttons on the control panel before them.

A voice fills the air.  _"If you like piña colatas, and getting caught in the rain, if you’re not into yoga…"_

Hogun is the only one who isn’t screaming obscenities at Volstagg. He merely states: “We should head towards the fires, not away from them.”

Ah. Right.

 

***

 

Agent Coulson is yelling into a cell phone, Jane Foster is concussed and having trouble standing, there’s a great big multicolored tornado laser  _thing_ blasting into the dirt fifty feet away, and progressively-strengthening vibrations are shaking the desert floor.

Darcy’s ability to keep cool in stressful situations is getting a little tested right now. “Jane?”

“Mmm. Did you bring my diagnostic sheets?”

“No. I didn’t. Come on, stick with me here.”

Her boss/supervisor/whatever shakes her head; the blood from her temple is smeared across her cheek. “Shhh, Darcy. I’m observing.”

Oh, for the love of God. “Seriously, get it together!” Would it help to slap her? That always works in the movies. “I don’t know how the hell any of this works. What do we do?”

“Hmm?”

“How do we stop it?” Jane just blinks at her, and Darcy thinks she might snap. “C’mon, Jane! You’re the physicist! Your bridge-thing is blasting the ground apart! Do something post-graduate-level smart!”

Another pulse of power comes shooting into the earth, and this tremor knocks both Darcy and Coulson off their feet. Even that doesn’t dislodge his grip on his cell, and Darcy can hear words like  _Anomaly_ and  _Stark_ and  _Base Team_.

“The bridge isn’t supposed to stay still,” shouts Jane over the increasingly loud rumbles. It’s like standing next to a waterfall and a landslide all at once. “It should be moving along natural stellar rotations — our planet isn’t built to—” Jane still seems pretty scrambled, but at least she’s making science-sense. (Darcy thinks.) “I mean, the ion focus lasting for more than fractions of a second could be enough to disintegrate the entire planet—”

“ _Disintegrate?_ As in  _the earth?_ ”

“I don’t know! There must have been something wrong with my math! It’s an inter-dimensional bridge that doesn’t obey universal laws of astrophysics!”

A series of hairline cracks starts to form in a circle around the laser-rainbow-thing.

Darcy’s starting to wish she’d called her mom this morning. “Okay,” she says, “it’s… it’s a bridge, right? So why don’t we just  _cross_? Isn’t there a guy up there? The Gatekeeper? We can tell him to turn it off!”

For a second, Jane looks at her like she’s crazy. “It doesn’t turn  _on_ and  _off_ ,” she retorts, and Darcy’s heard this argument about five thousand times.

“Fine! To move it, then! I don’t care! Can’t that work?”

Jane spits out a mouthful of sand as another wind blasts them, spraying rocks and dirt and grit. “I don’t know how to cross!” she shouts. “If I did it wrong we could wind up anywhere! We need Loki and Thor!”

“Well, we don’t have them!”

“What? Where are they? Aren’t they coming?”

Darcy just stares at Jane — and at the bruise on the side of her head.

Oh, shit.

“Jane,” she says, struggling to at least stay seated through another quake and not get knocked flat on her ass, “Thor and Loki aren’t here, and I… I don’t think they’re…” She’s not going to think about it, she’s not going to say it, she  _can’t_ say it, it’s  _Thor_ who is the best friend she’s ever had, and it’s Loki too, and their crazy friends are on their way and they’ll be fine, of course they’ll be fine, but there were so many screams as Coulson drove them out of town…

So she doesn’t say it. But she doesn’t have to.

A second later Darcy’s fighting both the wind and Jane herself, who’s scrabbling to get back to her feet. “No!” she cries, fighting tooth and nail. “He can’t! He promised!”

“Jane, get a grip!”

“He  _promised!_ We have to do something!”

 _“That’s what I’ve been telling you!”_ Darcy shoves Jane forcibly in the direction of the bridge. “Unless you have a better idea!”

She can tell by the look on Jane’s face that she doesn’t.

And as they both start staggering against the wind towards the giant space tornado, which will probably definitely send them to die out in the middle of the universe somewhere, Darcy reflects that it kind of  _was_ worth the six college credits.

 

***

 

“All right, JARVIS, auxiliary conduit test on Mach Six in three, two—”

“Tony? Agent Coulson’s on the phone.”

“I’m sick.”

“He says it’s urgent.”

“I have ebola.”

“I can hear explosions.”

“And appendicitis. I have an ebolic appendix.”

Pepper just looks at him.

Tony rolls his eyes, which Pepper can’t see behind the face plate but knows he’s doing anyway. “Fine,” he says with the injured sigh of the endlessly altruistic, “patch in the line.”

 

***

 

Once the mechanical beast gets going, it proves rather difficult to bring it to a stop again.

As the windowed building with the large metal star adorning the roof comes closer and closer, Sif looks more and more nervous. “Volstagg, you lunatic—”

“I know exactly what I’m doing,” replies Volstagg. “Do you not see the enemy archer atop the fortress? We will bring him down before he realizes we have arrived, and then we shall speed to Thor and Loki’s defense against the grounded warriors.”

“By  _crashing the mechanical beast?_ ”

“Consider it a battering ram. Get ready to jump.”

“I find this a highly questionable method by which to enter a battlefield!” Fandral kicks the back door open and looks down at the ground speeding by beneath their feet. “Not to mention inelegant!”

Hogun simply opens his door and waits.

Sif glares at the approaching glass walls. “This had better work,” she grumbles, pushing her own door open and gripping her staff tight.

Privately, Volstagg hopes so, too. “On three.”

The fortress looms up before them.

 

***

 

Clint can’t see a thing inside the diner where the brothers ran, but so far the only body that’s been tossed out the giant hole in the side of the building was that of an agent’s, so it’s probably not going so bad.

At least for them. Even with sparing and prudent usage, he’s about out of arrows.

Clint  _hates_ being out of arrows.

Especially when not everyone who needs to be shot is dead yet.

On the plus side, he doesn’t have long to reflect on this crappy state of affairs — because he notices the roar of an engine just behind him, and a bunch of people yelling “For Asgard!”—

—just as the roof falls out from under him.

Kinda distracts from the arrows thing.

 

 


	33. Wherein Odin weeps.

**Fairly certain we’re down to the last three or so...**

 

_Wherein Odin weeps. (Drama. R.)_

 

 

When he was younger — though perhaps it was not as long ago as it seems now — Thor would rail against the master warrior who insisted he train without the aid of his hammer.  _What need have I of staff and sword or fist?_ he had demanded.  _I wield Mjolnir, forged in the heart of a dying star. No man or beast will stand before its blows._

The master merely said  _Even a Prince of Asgard may be disarmed._

The younger Thor rolled his eyes at this, believing it to be nonsense. But he had learned — and if he makes it back to Asgard he will apologize to the man on bended knee.

Unfortunately, making it back to Asgard is looking less likely with each passing minute.

The tavern belonging to Isabella is now little more than a burned husk. These soldiers cannot use the weapons powered by the purloined tesseract in the small space, but their guns and knives are hardly ineffective, and Thor bleeds from a dozen wounds in a dozen places. A slash to his arm has slowed the strikes of his baton; a blow to his side has made each breath a stab.

Behind him, Loki fares better, being more accustomed to close combat. But Thor hears his grunts of pain as well.

His brother should have run.

Thor is selfishly glad that he did not.

On the positive side of things, they are surrounded by as many felled enemies as standing ones, and the people have fled in the streets. Once, Thor would have mocked the citizens for their cowardice. Now… now, he cannot imagine a greater purpose than to sacrifice his blood for those who so generously gave them shelter and support.

He is weak, he is powerless, but he is the God of Thunder, and this tiny village, like the rest of the realm, stands under  _his_ protection.

Thor fells another soldier and roars his might to the sky.

 

***

 

_In the ruins of S.H.I.E.L.D.’s fallen compound a hammer shudders within a rock._

 

***

 

Clint pulls himself from the wreckage of the fallen lab to find four Comic Con escapees holding Renfest shit to his throat. Jesus, even Budapest was better than this. “If you’re the backup Coulson sent,” he says, coughing, “you’re doing a piss-poor job so far.”

Robin Hood lowers his sword slightly. “You are a friend to the son of Coul?”

“Damn right.”

Xena smacks Giant Gimli on the back of the head.

The Burger King across the street bursts into flames.

“We seek Thor,” says Jackie Chan, looking completely unperturbed. “Direct us to him.”

Tasha’s never going to believe this. “Seeking Thor’s not going to do a thing unless we get the perimeter under control,” Clint tells them. “If you’re any good with those—” he nods to their weapons “—take care of the guys in the alleys. Otherwise we’re  _all_ fucked.”

Giant Gimli makes a scoffing noise as he raises his axe. “‘If you’re any good with those’,” he repeats mockingly. “Lie down, mortal, and we will show you how battles are won in Asgard.”

“Fine. Great. Just  _kill the right goddamn people._ ”

They do.

 

***

 

Loki is fairly certain he is going to die.

It’s a simple equation. They are outnumbered. He and Thor are skilled but overwhelmed; as mortals, they are only a match for, oh, four or five enemies at a time. Humiliating, but truth cares not for dignity. It never has.

Also, his knife is too dull.

As he takes another blow before felling the offender with a twist to the neck, he almost wishes that it would be over more quickly, because the madness of battle is not so complete that he lacks time to reflect. And those reflections are not satisfactory.

He wishes he had discovered the truth of Jotunheim.

He wishes he had said more to Mother.

He wishes he had proven himself to Father.

He wishes he had… well. He does not know precisely what he wishes had transpired with Jane Foster, only that he is dissatisfied with the conclusion. He is, at heart, a covetous creature, and he wanted more. There will be no opportunity now.

The next dagger carves a line across his side. He hears one of those loathsome guns click its metal gears into place.

It aims at Thor.

Loki allows himself two final thoughts before leaping forward: the first, that for all the lost chances, at least he has had time to make his peace with his brother. The second, that this is  _really_ going to hurt.

He is right.

 

***

 

 _Across sand, across air, across time, shimmers of gold ripple and form._  
  
  
***

 

“Okay,” says Iron Man as he flies Coulson away from what is either an interdimensional vortex or an acid flashback, “I’ll give it to you. That’s weird.”

“We’ll concern ourselves with the weird later.”

“I dunno. JARVIS is picking up seismic activity which — and I don’t want to jump to any conclusions — might _possibly_ have something to do with your little rift in time and space over there. So I’d say the weird should be topping your priority list right now.”

“There are rogue S.T.R.I.K.E. agents burning a small town to a crisp about ten miles south of here.”

“Can’t leave you alone for a minute, can I.”

“Stark—”

“Fine, fine. I’ll save your town and then save the world.  _Again_. What  _would_ you guys do without me?”

 

***

 

Thor is able to hold off the enemy long enough to drag his brother into a small room containing bags of flour and shelves of coffee mugs. “You are a fool,” he mutters. The wound cannot be so bad. It cannot, surely it cannot—

—Thor peels back his brother’s coat.

No.

“We  _did_ say we wanted to die in battle.” He laughs weakly; it forces another gush of blood from his abdomen. “Better this than poison.”

“Surely you won’t allow yourself to perish from a mere scratch. I would mock your spirit all the way to Valhalla.” When Loki’s muscles go slack, he clasps the back of his brother’s neck, as he has done ten thousand times before. “No, no, stop that. Stay with me.”

The soldiers pound upon the barricaded door.

“That’s not going to hold,” Loki murmurs, saying what Thor already knows. “Take at least six of them with you before you fall.”

“Why did you do it? If we’re both to die anyway,  _why?_ ”

Loki just smiles. “You’re my brother,” he says simply.

His eyelids flutter shut as the door bursts open.

 

***

 

_Let them suffer in their exile. Let them be humbled without their power. Let them learn the cost of their follies. In the name of my father, and his father before him, let my sons find their way before the die is cast._

 

***

 

Fernanda stands in the doorway of her bar, fire extinguisher in hand, and glares at the  _rulacho_ with the glowing blue cannon who stands before her. “My ex-husband’s bigger than you and twice as mean,” she tells him. “So come and get it, dickwad. I’m not afraid.”

No one — but  _no one_ — is taking what’s hers.

As for what would have happened next (and there’s really no way of knowing who would have won the standoff), Fern never finds out, because out of nowhere the sky fills with lightning and thunder and gold and green and  _was that a flying hammer—_

The last of Isabella’s diner collapses as ten bodies go flying out into the street.

And out from the rubble, walking calmly, without a speck of dust on whatever the hell they’re wearing, comes…

“What the fuck,” murmurs the  _rulacho_.

Fern brains him on the back of the head with the fire extinguisher.

_No one._

 

 

 


	34. Wherein smartphones fail to adequately capture the weirdness of Puente Antiguo.

 

 

**This month, guys. This freakin’ month. But I’m going to finish this story if it kills me.**

 

 

 _Wherein smartphones fail to adequately capture the weirdness of Puente Antiguo. (Action. R.)_  
  
  
  
  
If Jane is going to die, she can’t imagine a better way to go than soaring through a wormhole, untold galaxies streaking by in long lines, surrounded by all the colors Loki had told her of, heart compressed in her chest and wind that can’t possibly exist in the vacuum of space pulling at her hair.

Even with Darcy clinging to her shoulders and screaming, this is the greatest moment of Jane’s life.

It’s over too fast; she hasn’t had time to observe. They stumble into some kind of metal dome and Jane, dizzy with scientific joy and the head wound, topples to her hands and knees. So does Darcy. “We,” Jane says, “ _have_ to do that again.”

“ _No,_ we don’t.” Darcy’s making noises like a cat about to hork up a hairball. “That  _sucked_. Please tell me we made it.”

“I… think so?” There’s _interstellar material_ under Jane’s hands. She resists the urge to stroke it and glances up instead. “Hi,” she says blankly.

The helmeted man standing atop the platform in the center of the — room? — nods impassively, like total strangers fall out of space and at his feet every day of the week. That is a _big_ sword. “Welcome to Asgard,” he says.

 _Asgard_.

It’s true.

It’s _all true_.

And this is the Gatekeeper. He has to be. “Um, thanks. We’re—”

“Jane Foster and Darcy Lewis of Midgard. I know.”

Wow. _How_ does he know? Jane wants to ask, to pry every last scrap of information from the guy who _watches the universe_ , but the roaring in her ears distracts her from even this opportunity that Newton would have given his right leg for. The vortex is still swirling behind them and, presumably, ripping into the Earth. “Listen, this might sound strange—”

“Very little sounds strange to me.”

“—but this Einstein-Rosen bridge has the potential to cause severe destruction on the other end of the connection. The focus point…” Jane trails off, unable to resist a good look at the gears that line the curving walls. “ _Is_ this a focus point? How can—”

“Shut it down,” interrupts Darcy. She struggles to her feet, still looking green. “Whatever you’ve got to do, shut this thing down before it destroys everything!”

(Jane swallows the knee-jerk impulse to correct her; you can’t _shut down_ an Einstein-Rosen bridge. But this isn’t the time.)

The Gatekeeper’s expression doesn’t change for an instant. “The Bifrost is to remain open until the Princes return,” he intones.

Darcy just gapes. “But there’s— what if something happens to them? What if they _can’t_ come back?”

(Jane bites back a retort for this one, too. They’ll be fine. Of course they’ll be fine. Loki promised to show her the stars. Slapping him can’t be the last contact they’ll have.)

A beat. “The Bifrost is to remain open until the Princes return,” the Gatekeeper repeats… a little bit gently. Just a little.

Jane and Darcy stare at each other.

 

***

 

It takes a lot to surprise Tony Stark these days.

Well, let’s face it — it took a lot to surprise him _before_ , too. He’s always been a roll with the punches sort of guy (and it helps when the ground is cushioned with hundred-dollar bills… sometimes literally). But Tony can’t recall ever really being knocked out of left field since becoming Iron Man. Just doesn’t happen. Isn’t happening now, either, not really.

But, as he sets Agent Coulson down next to the remains of what he says was a laboratory, Tony’s got to admit it: New Mexico’s pretty damn weird. “JARVIS, talk to me.”

“Sir, thirty-one percent of the permanent structures in Puente Antiguo are on fire.”

“Yeah, I can see that. Water mains?”

“In tact. Scanning for emergency vehicles.”

“Don’t bother, I’m faster than any trucks. What about the S.H.I.E.L.D. psychos? How many are we talking about here?”

“Current scans put the number at twenty-two.” JARVIS pauses. “Twenty.” Another pause. “Seventeen.”

“Really? Who’s taking these guys out?”

“The readings are… indeterminate, sir.”

“Well, enemy of mine enemy. We’ll deal with that later. Let’s find some hydrants.”

“Yes, sir.”

 

***

 

Volstagg is surprised by the efficacy of the enemy’s Midgardian weapons. Those blue blasts of power _hurt_ — and, furthermore, seem… familiar.

But no mortal, no matter how well armed, will ever stand against Lady Sif and the Warriors Three.

It doesn’t take long before their opponents are felled beneath staff and sword and ax. “It was almost as if they resented being in battle,” remarks Fandral, looking up and down the alley for more enemies (there are none).

“There’s just no pleasing some people,” says Volstagg as he wipes his blade clean upon his leathers.  “Anyone else?”

“I heard several to the east,” says Sif. “We must get to Thor before they—”

She stops when Hogun holds up a bloodied hand.

The sky fills with clouds, and a familiar crack of thunder echoes through the alley.

Oh, good.

“I suspect,” says Fandral wryly, “that Thor will be fine.”

 

***

 

“Holy shit. Holy shit. Holy _shit_ —”

“Will you shut the fuck up? I’m trying to get this!” Cherry Beth, one foot on top of a box full of angry kittens and one seriously alarmed chihuahua puppy, aims her iPhone around the alley corner and clicks ‘record’. “No one’s going to believe this isn’t shopped.”

Kyle wraps his arms around his parakeet pillowcase. The squawking is audible even over the thunder. “ _I_ don’t believe it isn’t shopped! What the _hell_ is going on?”

“If you want to know then stop cowering and come look!”

“I don’t have a death wish!”

“Wimp!”

“I’m not a wimp! It’s the fucking apocalypse out there!”

“It’s  _not_ the apocalypse, it’s… uh…”

“What? It’s  _what_?”

Cherry Beth lowers the phone. “Kyle,” she manages to say, “Thor can fucking _fly_.”

 

***

 

Chester is too young and too pretty to die. But if he has to go out, it may as well be in a blaze of glory. “All right,” he says to the soldier-or-whatever in front of him, raising his chainsaw; it sputters helplessly, down to the fumes. “You best get out of my town, motherfucker, or I’ll give you a taste of this.”

The soldier cocks his crazy-ass weapon. “You’re out of gas, you idiot.”

“Maybe I am,” declares Chester, “and maybe I ain’t. You’ve gotta ask yourself one question: do I feel lucky?”

“God, I hate this place.”

“Well, do ya, punk?”

“Shut up.” The giant gun rises, and this is it, this is the end, but Chester gets ready to throw the saw as he goes down—

“Oh, but I _like_ this.”

Chester and the soldier both turn.

If Chester hadn’t spent a lot of time observing him — and he’s spent a _lot_ of time observing him — he doesn’t think he’d recognize the man standing next to them. The man in the black armor and green cape and… and _horns_.

The hell?

The soldier immediately swings his big-ass gun to point at this crazy costumed person who is apparently Loki. “Put your hands in the air,” he demands, which kind of impresses Chester, who would need to change his underwear if he were in the soldier’s situation. (He might anyway.)

Loki raises his hands obediently — and mockingly, somehow. “Threatening a harmless old man with a weapon you can’t possibly understand,” he says. (Old?) “I’ve never been one for honorable combat — ask anyone — but is this not some violation of integrity, even here?”

“Lace your fingers behind your head and get on your knees.”

“I do not kneel, Midgardian.”

“You will if you’ve got a hole blown through your gut.”

“Your compatriots tried that earlier. I’d say you should ask them how it turned out, but, well…”

The big-ass gun makes some kind of whirring noise. “Last chance, freak show.”

He might be about to shit his pants, but Chester’s not gonna let this happen. “Run!” he shouts to Loki, raising his chainsaw over his head. (The weight almost tips him backwards.) “I’ll hold him off!” He swings the saw downwards, aiming for the soldier’s arm—

—and the soldier gurgles as blood erupts from his mouth in a hot red gush.

The Loki with his hands raised vanishes in a shimmer of light; another Loki who came _out of nowhere_ pulls a wicked-looking knife free of the soldier’s back. “Look to your elder, mortal,” he says as the soldier falls to his knees. “Let _him_ be an example. For as I said—” there’s another gush of blood as the blade slips between the soldier’s ribs once more “— _I_ am not one for honor.”

The chainsaw hits the ground at the same moment as the soldier’s body.

Holy…

“You saved my life,” breathes Chester as Loki sheathes his dagger.

He glances at Chester, pauses for a moment, then blinks. “So it would seem,” he replies, sounding as surprised as Chester himself.

“Are… are you a wizard?”

“A god, actually.”

“Can I hug you?”

_“No.”_

 

***

 

“I should privatize emergency responses,” says Tony as he zips to the next blaze, leaving another soggy, smoldering, but now-safe building in his wake. “JARVIS, some mood music.”

“Yes, sir.”

_“We didn’t start the fire; it was always burnin’, since the world’s been turnin’; we didn’t start the fire…”_

“Nice.”

“Thank you, sir.”

 

***

 

“You’re having a bad day,” remarks Coulson as he digs Barton out of the rubble.

“I’ve had worse.”

“Where’s my car?”

Barton points to the other side of the smoking wreck of the lab.

Damn it.

 

 

 

 


	35. Wherein everyone gets the hell out of dodge.

 

 

**This is the penultimate chapter, guys. Just one more.**

 

 

_Wherein everyone gets the hell out of dodge. (Action. R.)_   
  


  
  
Most of the residents of Puente Antiguo stand in the streets, staring in shock at what remains of their home. This is a dump of a town, it always has been, no one’s going to pretend otherwise, but it’s still _theirs_ , and now there’s wreckage and bodies and burned out husks and… uh…

Fernanda doesn’t really know what to say as the Batshit Brothers — to whom she’s served beer and smacked on the side of the head — meet in the middle of the broken boulevard and hug, grinning, and then are joined by four other total strangers who are dressed like they’ve wandered out of some production of—

“Is this Shakespeare in the Park?”

Fern turns to find the famous Iron Man standing next to her. Because, why not? Sure! Iron Man! _¡Chido!_ It’s no more fucked up than anything else that’s happened today! “That’s Thor and Loki,” she tells him. He’s shorter than she expected. “They live here.”

“Really? ‘Cause they don’t look like the down-home desert types.”

“They do if I say they do, _gringo. Son culeros, pero los hermanos locos nos pertenecen._ ”

“Hey, if you want ‘em.” Iron Man looks around with a click of machinery, seeming to register the destruction for the first time. “Kind of a mess. JARVIS,” he says, and who the hell is Jarvis, “I’ve got some kind of charity organization for stuff like this, right?”

He’s silent for a few moments.

“Maybe.”

Silence.

“Probably in one of those email accounts I don’t check.”

Silence.

“Yeah, okay, assess property damage.”

Silence.

“Ballpark it, then.”

Silence.

“I don’t know.”

Silence.

“Don’t know that either.”

Silence.

“Aw, hell, whatever. Find Pepper, she’ll sort something out. Who’s in charge?”

Silence.

“Hello?” Iron Man waves a hand in front of Fern’s face. “Anyone home?”

Fern blinks. “Who are you talking to?”

“You. Well, I am now. Do you have a mayor or something?”

“Just the county board forty miles out. We fend for ourselves around here.”

“Then you’re the Puente Antiguo Representative to Stark Industries. Congratulations. I’m going to give you a number, you’re going to call a very competent woman named Pepper Potts, you’re going to explain to her what happened—”

“I don’t _know_ what happened!”

“Oh, just blame the whole thing on me. Pepper’s used to it. So’s the legal team. They’ll get some money and repair guys over here, and this whole place will be fixed up before you know it. Do you people have free WiFi? You should get some free WiFi. Tell Pepper I said to set something up. JARVIS, where’s Coulson? I’m still a little worried about that vortex that’s going to kill us all.”

And he walks away.

If this town doesn’t get a therapist soon, Fern’s moving to Phoenix. She really is.

 

***

 

His powers have returned.

His enemies are defeated.

His brother is alive.

Thor has well and truly never been happier. “My friends,” he says, pulling Volstagg, Fandral, and Sif each into an embrace in turn. (Hogun does not believe in embraces.) “You’ve come at last!”

“At last indeed,” mutters Loki. “Were all the realms at war, that you were too distracted to find us?”

Volstagg claps Loki on the shoulder (he flinches). “We wished to, but could not,” he says. “Your mother closed the Bifrost.”

Mother?

Thor glances at his brother, who looks as baffled as he himself feels. “You mean the All-Father, surely.”

“The All-Father has fallen into the Odinsleep, Thor. Frigga now sits upon the throne of Asgard.” Sif’s expression is stormy. “It is she who forbid your return until this day.”

Loki shakes his head slowly. “You lie.”

“Do not accuse _me_ of deception, Silvertongue. If _you_ had not—”

“While I do love to see everyone pick up right where they left off,” interrupts Fandral, “there is a greater concern on the horizon.” He points to the south. “The Queen does nothing by halves, including changing her mind.”

Thor looks off into the distance, beyond the borders of their town. A storm swirls through the sky — one _not_ caused by Mjolnir. “The Rainbow Bridge! But why does it not close?”

“The Queen has ordered it open until we bring you home.” As though in response to Volstagg’s words, the ground shifts beneath their feet. Pieces of the already-damaged buildings fall to the street with a rumble. “We must go. Quickly.”

Thor is struck by another thought. A terrifying one. “Brother,” he says slowly, “is that not the direction you sent—”

But Loki is already running.

 

***

 

Darcy has never panicked in her life… until now. “You are seriously going to kill _everyone!_ ” she screams at the Gatekeeper — partly because she _wants_ to scream, and partly because it’s the only way to be heard in this freaky sphere that’s making some very scary noises to go with the very scary flashes of light. “ _Including_ Thor and Loki if they’re still alive!”

“If they live, they will return. If not, Midgard is to feel the wrath of Asgard for their deaths.”

“Who the hell said _that_ was fair?”

“I am sworn to obey my Queen.”

“Are you _kidding me?_ ” Darcy turns wildly to Jane. “Help me, here! Make him understand!” Why does she always have to handle everything? She doesn’t know how! She’s not _that_ smart, she’s not _that_ strong, she tries her best but she can’t make it _all_ happen and she never signed up for _saving the Earth_ and what is she supposed to do now? _“Jane!”_

Jane’s looking really scared too, spinning on her heel so fast that she’s got to be getting dizzy. “Darcy, we have to get out of here,” she shouts as another surge of lightning crackles up the curving walls. “It’s going to fall apart!”

_“What?”_ Darcy swings back to the Gatekeeper. “Can that happen?”

The Gatekeeper catches Darcy’s eye; his gaze is a freaky shade of yellow, and the first expression she’s seen from him is the tiniest sad smile. “I have stood at this gate for more than a thousand years,” he says, “and here I will continue to stand. Now flee, little mortals.”

What else can they do?

 

***

 

“Hi. I’m Agent Coulson with the Strategic Homeland Intervention, Enforcement and Logistics Division. Please exit your vehicle, sir.”

“Huh?”

Clint, leaning on Coulson’s shoulder to keep weight off a twisted ankle, rolls his eyes. “We need your truck,” he tells the grizzled old man in the Dodge, “to save the world.”

“Oh,” says the old man. His liver-spotted knuckles crack against the steering wheel. “Sure, why not.”

“See?” Clint tells Coulson as he gets hoisted into the truck bed. “I told you you’ve been with S.H.I.E.L.D. too long. Speak the language of the people.”

“I’ll take that under advisement. Everybody in.”

Clint taps off a quick headcount as the Dodge rocks under the weight of the passengers — Coulson, himself, and four aliens. Thor’s already flown on ahead (he can fly — who knew?), and Stark’s going to give them a push, but aren’t they short someone? “Hey, who’s missing?”

 

***

 

Rumlow knows he’s not getting out of this one. It’s okay; the kind of soldier who does what he does isn’t known for a long lifespan. It’s not like he expected to make it to retirement.

But he really hates leaving a mission incomplete.

Half-buried in the remains of the laboratory, at least two limbs broken and tasting iron from the internal bleeding, he watches as Loki — dressed in the weirdest get-up ever — digs feverishly through the rubble, turning over two hundred pound chunks of concrete as though they’re bricks in a garden.

_“Loki!”_

The demigod ignores the call, but about thirty seconds later he comes across something that makes him grin and tucks it into his coat. When he steps back, the twisted mess of the roof shifts around him — and against Rumlow’s ribs.

He can’t help it. He groans.

Loki pauses.

Spots him.

“Ah. _You._ ”

Approaches.

Well, then. Rumlow smiles a bloody smile. “Cut off one head,” he murmurs, “two more shall take its place.”

“An interesting theory. Let us test it.”

The last thing Rumlow sees is the glint of a dagger swinging for his throat.

 

***

 

“Lagging behind again?” says Robin Hood as Loki hoists himself into back of the truck with everyone else.

“I had a promise to keep,” he replies. Then he leans past Clint — yeesh, personal space, there’s only so much room for six people in this truck bed especially when one of them is Giant Gimli — to speak to the old guy, who’s taking this all pretty well behind his sunglasses. “Will you convey a message to the village?”

“Guess so, yeah.”

“Good.” Loki glances back at the town. “Tell them they are henceforth under the protection of the Princes of Asgard. We will watch over them, defend them in their times of trouble, and from this day forward, they may count the gods Thor and Loki as their allies.” He pauses. “And thank them for what they have done for us during our exile. All of them.”

“Even the perverts?”

“Yes.”

The old man shrugs. “I’ll let ‘em know.”

“You have my gratitude.”

All four of the other aliens stare as Loki sits back. “Who are you,” says Giant Gimli, “and what have you done with Loki?”

“Is this some new web that you spin?” demands Xena. “What trick do you have in mind for these innocents?”

Loki only examines his fingernails.

“Whatever,” says Iron Man. He gets a good grip on the back bumper, and Clint finds a handhold just above the right wheel. This is going to be rough. “Ready or not!”

And then they’re flying.

 

***

 

The boa constrictor, who did not reach her size and status by easily giving into panic, continues to ignore the tumult of Puente Antiguo and concerns herself with peacefully winding around the body of one of the smaller fallen S.T.R.I.K.E. agents.

Lunch!

 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **Son culeros, pero los hermanos locos nos pertenecen.** _—They’re assholes, but the crazy brothers belong to us._
> 
> Also, oh HAI Stan Lee!  
> 


	36. Wherein many people work things out... and some don't.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Here we are. The last drabble.
> 
> I’m not even going to lie about why this story became what it did. MCU!Lokane is — and, frankly, should be — angst and darkness and mindfuckery and a whole lot of disturbing. It’s just the nature of the pairing. And that’s pretty much exclusively the kind of fic I deal in.
> 
> But dammit, I wanted to take a break from that and spend some time with these people:
> 
>  
> 
> BECAUSE I JUST DID, OKAY. I WANTED TO HAVE SEMI-CANON MOSTLY-IN-CHARACTER FUN WHERE EVERYONE WAS SOMEWHAT HAPPY AT LEAST PART OF THE TIME. I DIDN’T WANT TO HURT ANYMORE.
> 
> And apparently, a lot of you guys felt the same. Y’all readers are awesome, and I hope this… well, if not exactly satisfies, at least works. Thanks :)

 

_Wherein many people work things out... and some don't. (Drama. R.)_

 

 

_[are we tough enough for ordinary love?](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KYQi5CLpdIg) _

  
  
  
  
  
  
Heimdall is a watcher. His role, his purpose, his existence is to witness. Not to act.

But the Queen of Asgard has declared she will see her children returned, or the realm that took their lives will suffer the wrath of the forgotten gods. And if the Queen commands, the Gatekeeper obeys.

(As Frigga commands, so Heimdall obeys.)

Nevertheless, it is to his relief — or would be, were he the sort to be moved by such emotions — when the eldest Prince of Asgard appears at last upon this, the entrance to Asgard. Before his cape stopped fluttering he shouts: “You must close the Bifrost!”

Heimdall has only one question. “Where is your brother?”

“Only just behind. We will retrieve everyone just as soon as the Earth is safe once more, I swear it, but their world cannot withstand the bridge any longer! It _must_ close, Heimdall!”

The Gatekeeper is sworn to obey his liege.

(As Frigga desires, so Heimdall obeys.)

So he will not shut the gate himself.

He will, however, step away from the greatsword Hofund. And he will watch — watch, as he was meant — while Thor takes the hilt in his grasp and twists it with all his mighty strength.

Nothing happens.

“Heimdall—”

“The connection has been open for too long,” says Heimdall. (Regretfully.) “The full power has been unleashed. Go; go to the Queen; it is my duty to stay.”

Heimdall has seen many things. So many things. So many things that there are times he does not only see, but _fore_ sees.

But he does not foresee the way Thor strikes him in the chest with Mjolnir with enough force to knock him far afield of the gate. He strikes the Rainbow Bridge at some distance, breath knocked form his lungs, safe. As he did not wish to be.

He opens his eyes to see the mortals looking down at him. “Why aren’t there any safety barriers on this stupid road?” demands Darcy Lewis. “You could have fallen right off!”

 

***

 

“Do you really want to do this?” Tony shouts as they approach the Giant Swirling Space Bridge of Death. “I try not to get people killed if I don’t have to!”

“It will work!”

“Are you sure?”

“Mostly!”

“Because if you die, so does the entire planet!”

The Norse Trickster God of Lies glares at him. “Will you kindly _shut up_ and do as I instructed?”

“Sir, the Einstein-Rosen bridge is approaching.”

“Yeah. Kinda hard to miss.”

“If we get closer than five hundred feet, the wind tunnel will pull us into the vortex.”

“Thanks, JARVIS, that makes me feel better.”

The aliens glance at each other nervously. “He speaks to himself,” says the hot chick.

“We’re in the hands of a madman,” says the blond.

“It is _my_ plan, my friends.”

“Apologies. _Two_ madmen.”

“Eat me, Volstagg.”

“Is that an insult to my appetite?”

“A local idiom. _And_ an insult.” Loki leans in the back window of the truck. “Son of Coul, if Jane Foster and Darcy Lewis are not safely in Asgard, you will not enjoy our next meeting.”

“I didn’t enjoy _this_ one that much.” Coulson opens the driver’s door and glances down at the desert floor rushing by below them. “They went in; that’s all I know.”

“Sir, we’re approaching five hundred feet,” says JARVIS.

Now or never. “All right,” says Tony, slowing down just a hair, “all Earthlings off the ride.” Coulson jumps without hesitation; Barton hesitates as he jams what looks like a broken ankle against the wheel well. “You too, Legolas.”

Barton flips him off, then leaps.

“Is everyone else strapped in?”

A chorus of  _no_ s.

“Oh, well. End of the line.” Five hundred feet, and yep, Tony can feel this rainbow tornado sucking at his armor like a black hole. “Good luck, guys.”

And he hurls the truck, five alien passengers and all, right into the vortex.

It vanishes.

 

***

 

On the other side of the Bifrost, Thor ducks as pieces of a vehicle come sailing through the air and crash through the far side of the disintegrating gate.

 

***

 

There must be a scientific reason for what’s happening, and therefore a scientific solution, but even if Jane knew what it was she wouldn’t know how to implement it. Not here, on the other side of the universe.

The Earth is going to be destroyed under the unsupportable weight of a bridge through space unless they _do something_.

Darcy’s still trying to get the Gatekeeper to his feet. Jane’s thinking as fast as she can. “We have to break the connection,” she shouts at her intern.

“No shit!”

“No, I mean, we have to _break_ the connection!” She stamps her foot on the shining, multicolored road beneath them. It looks like glass. Maybe it’s just as brittle. “With… with dynamite, or something—”

“ _Dynamite?_ Are you high?”

“I’m open to suggestions!”

“That’s a first!”

“Is this really the time to— _aaah!_ ”

In this moment, Jane Foster discovers something she had never before known. She discovers that, in addition to having three degrees, she also has surprisingly fast reflexes. Which is why no one dies when the bumper formerly belonging to a Dodge Ram pickup comes sailing through the space their heads occupied a half-second before she tackled Darcy.

The rest of the truck hits the road, chucks its passengers into sprawling heaps, rolls right past them, and slides off the bridge into the abyss.

“Holy crap!” cries Darcy.

 

***

 

If he’d still been human, the impact would most assuredly have killed him. But he is not — and thank all the heavens for _that_ — and so Loki manages to wobble to his feet just in time to nearly be felled by another blast of energy bursting from the Bifrost gate.

 _Why_ is the damned thing still open?

 _“Brother!”_ Thor, Mjolnir in hand — and Loki never, _ever_ thought he’d be so happy to see his brother raise his hammer — comes running down the Rainbow Bridge. “Hofund will not turn — the Bifrost will not close!”

What? “How can that be? Where is Heimdall?”

Thor points beyond them, and as he does, an elated expression comes across his face. Yes, just past Sif and the Warriors Three, there is Heimdall lying prone, and next to him—

Loki nearly staggers with relief.

He will not have to wreak vengeance upon the son of Coul after all.

Jane Foster and Darcy Lewis, hale and whole, see them as well. The latter is shouting something he cannot hear. The former gestures wildly—

She stamps upon the bridge, and makes a snapping motion with her hands.

Clever little mortal.

He glances at Thor, who has gotten the message as well. “Can you do it?” he asks his brother.

Thor twists Mjolnir in his hand. “I suppose we’ll find out. Can you block it?”

“I suppose we’ll find out.” This is going to take a _lot_ of magic. “Father will be furious.”

“Indeed. But he can hardly banish us a _second_ time.” Thor smirks at him. “Right?”

Loki grins back. “Right.”

 

***

 

“Look at this,” breathes Jane.

Darcy looks, even though she thinks she’s done enough _looking_ in the last half hour for a lifetime. It’s kind of hard _not_ to. Spots flash in her vision from everywhere: the lightning flying out of the Bifrost-sphere-gate-thing, the bursts on the ground where Thor smacks the road with that hammer of his over and over again, the golden shimmer all around them that starts from Loki’s palms and keeps getting thicker and thicker until everything else becomes harder to see—

—but every time Mew-Mew hits, there’s another blast of light. Every time there’s another blast of light, the golden shimmer around them crackles. Every time the golden shimmer crackles, Loki falters. “Thor,” he yells, voice cracking, “finish it!”

Another shudder beneath their feet.

The temperature drops about fifty degrees. The shimmering wall is suddenly shot through with ice.

Loki falls to his knees.

 _“Loki!”_ Jane cries out.

Even from this distance, even through the barrier, Darcy can hear Thor roaring with his final strike.

Then it all explodes.

 

***

 

Deep beneath the Mojave Desert, fifty of S.H.I.E.L.D.’s Western Division scientists — including Erik Selvig — hit the floor as the tesseract shoots waves of gamma radiation a hundred yards in every direction.

 

***

 

The earthquake stopping makes Coulson, Stark, and Clint lurch. “What the hell just happened?” says Stark.

Clint stares up into the suddenly cloudless blue sky. His ankle hurts like hell. “I think… it worked.”

“Oh. Yay. Go team.”

Coulson’s already walking in the direction of the base. “I have a _lot_ of phone calls to make.”

 

***

 

Time seems to slow down as the shards of the Rainbow Bridge fly. Loki, caught in the burst of energy, sails through the air, feels the pull of the abyss, a bottomless well that can only lead to his death or worse—

—and jerks to a stop as a hand locks around his ankle.

“Must you be so _heavy_ , brother?”

Loki twists around to see Thor clinging with one hand to the shattered edge of the Bifrost. The other holds onto his leg for dear life. “Says the fool who ate his weight in Pop-Tarts weekly,” he retorts on instinct, panting for breath through the thin air and panic.

“Shut up.”

“Make me.”

“I _will_ drop you.”

Before Loki can gear up for another reply, the stress around his body starts to ease. He and Thor are weightless, wrapped in magic, floating effortlessly through a golden glimmer, up up up, to be guided back onto the Bridge and rested gently before—

“Bickering even now,” their mother laments, smiling through her tears. “I suppose I shouldn’t be shocked.”

 

***

 

The residents of Puente Antiguo stand in the middle of Main Street, watching as the multi-hued tornado on the horizon vanishes in a puff.

Fernanda, using Isabella’s piece of shit cell because her own was destroyed, covers her free ear with her hand. “It was mostly fire,” she shouts into the phone. The reception sucks. “There was some blue guns that blew stuff up, too.”

 _“All right. We have a form system to streamline that.”_ Fern doesn’t know what this Pepper Potts does, exactly, but she seems to be really good at the whole organizing-rampant-destruction thing. _“I’ll have a representative from legal there in the next two hours, and we’ll go from there. Is Tony still around?”_

“Iron Man? No, he left.”

_“I see. If he comes back, slap him and tell him it was from me.”_

“I can do that.”

_“Thank you.”_

 

***

 

A few short months ago, Thor would have been mad with blood joy over the triumphs of this day.

Now, wiser and humbled, he knows that if he never sees another battle like this it will be too soon. “Mother,” he murmurs, feeling like a boy as she envelops him in her arms. Thank the heavens their friends are still far distant, because he can feel his eyes growing moist. “Midgard nearly burned!”

“But it did not.”

“But—”

“You are home. That is all that matters.”

“I missed you.”

“Oh, my son. How I missed you as well.” Frigga has no concerns about maintaining a stoic front; she weeps freely, even as she laughs. “Look at you — you have grown!”

“Mother, I have been the same height for three hundred years.”

“Indulge me.” He has to bend nearly into a bow to allow her to kiss his forehead. He does so willingly.

She smiles, then releases him to turn to Loki — Loki, who stands back, hesitant as Thor has never seen him. “Loki?” she says gently, extending her hand.

He does not take it. “You left us on Earth.”

“Yes.”

“Why?” It is Loki’s voice that cracks with betrayal, but Thor feels the burn of anguish as well. Of doubt. “Why didn’t you bring us back?”

Frigga’s smile widens as she steps forward to touch Loki’s face. “You’ve grown as well,” she whispers, stroking his cheek. Thor watches as his brother’s tears spill over onto their mother’s fingers. “Do you not see? There is a purpose to everything your father does.”

 _You are unworthy,_ Father had said.

Thor glances down at Mjolnir, held from him for so long. Now it rests light as a feather in his grasp. Lighter, indeed, than ever it was before.

Ah.

Loki has given in to their mother’s embrace — it would take a harder man than either of them to resist for long. But then he says the strangest thing. “Mother, on— on Jotunheim, there was—”

“Shh. We will speak of it later, my son.” Frigga releases him and backs away, still beaming at them both. “For now, you have several very worried friends to reassure.”

 

***

 

Sitwell knows the shit has hit the fan when he sees Coulson and Barton — both decidedly more alive than they were supposed to be by now — approaching the smoking crater that used to be the S.H.I.E.L.D. base, nearly identical expressions of horror on their faces. The fact that Iron Man is with them is just the icing on the cake.

Well. Sitwell has always known how to think fast.

He drops the last flash drive to the ground and crushes it beneath his heel. “Agents!” he shouts, waving his arms. “Thank God you’re here! S.T.R.I.K.E. killed everyone — Rumlow’s gone insane!”

Hail HYDRA.

 

***

 

“So that was the real Thor and Loki,” says the guy from the 7-11.

The old man shrugs.

“We watched Norse gods have sex and get drunk and play Playstation.”

The old man shrugs again.

The guy from 7-11 shakes his head. “Should’ve charged more for those Slurpees,” he mutters, and heads back to the store to clean his shotgun.

 

***

 

Volstagg doesn’t know what to make of _most_ of what’s happened today, but what shocks him the most is how the little Midgardian in the glasses runs across the bridge to Thor, outpacing all of them, even Sif — only to punch the Prince of Asgard right in the arm. “You jerk!” she shouts. “I thought you were going to die fighting all those crazy agent guys! You freaked me out! You _know_ how I hate being freaked out!”

Thor’s expression turns… turns… _sheepish_. (Volstagg blinks multiple times to make sure he’s seeing it right, which is still more subtle than Fandral’s dropping jaw.) “I apologize,” he says. (Sif coughs in shock. Even Hogun’s eyes widen.) “I had to put an end to the threat.”

“With a _lawn chair?_ Dude! I had Mace! You could have used _that!_ ”

Further down the bridge, the Queen speaks quietly to Heimdall. That’s a conversation Volstagg’s glad he can’t overhear.

The other Midgardian woman stands before Loki, and if Volstagg has never seen Thor sheepish, he has _certainly_ never seen Loki apprehensive. Yet here he is, the Silvertongue himself, removing his helmet and shifting his weight. “Are you all right?” he asks.

The Midgardian woman nods.

Loki pauses, then reaches into his coat. He pulls out a somewhat singed notebook; the woman takes it automatically when he holds it forward. “Everything else was destroyed,” he explains. “But I—”

The woman tosses the notebook aside and launches herself into Loki’s arms, wrapping her legs around his waist and kissing him passionately.

Lady Sif and the Warriors Three stare.

“Don’t worry,” says the loud, punch-y Midgardian, addressing someone other than Thor for the first time. “They do that all the time. You get used to it. I’m Darcy Lewis, by the way, and that’s Jane Foster who’s lip-locked with Loki, and you’re…”

“Volstagg.”

“Fandral.”

“Hogun.”

“Sif.”

“My friends,” says Thor, putting an arm around Darcy Lewis’s shoulders, “allow me to introduce the wisest creature I’ve ever encountered in _any_ realm.” He grins down at her. “But _now_ , my bestie, it is _I_ who have much to teach _you_.”

“Cool.”

Fandral frowns at Sif. “What’s a ‘bestie’?”

“So,” murmurs Jane Foster, still held firmly against Loki’s body, “is this how you normally look?”

Loki grins. “More or less.”

“It’s a  _good_ look.”

“Uh, guys? Science-y guys? Not to interrupt, but—” Darcy Lewis points over the edge of the broken Bifrost “—how, exactly, are we supposed to get _home?_ ”

 

***

 

“Come check this out.”

“No. I’m not playing Words with Friends. You cheat.”

“It’s not Words with Friends, and I do _not_ cheat.”

“‘Xi’ isn’t a word.”

“It’s a letter in the Greek alphabet.”

“Foreign languages shouldn’t count.”

“You’re just pissed because you lost again. Seriously, I need you to see this.”

Agent Hakim kicks her rolling chair from her desk to Agent Dion’s. “What is it?”

Dion clicks on a YouTube video uploaded two hours earlier by CherryBerryBeth2931.

A video of Puente Antiguo.

Featuring their former surveillance subject.

In a red cape.

With the giant hammer.

Flying.

It’s already got over a hundred thousand hits.

Dion and Hakim look at each other.

“Okay,” says Hakim finally. “More Words with Friends.”

“Sounds good.”

 

***

 

Deep within the palace of Asgard, Odin All-Father opens his eyes.  
  
  
  
  


**_the end._ **

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thor, Loki, Jane, and Darcy will return in the sequel drabble series **Out of Town.** Now collecting prompts.
> 
>  
> 
>  
> 
> ETA: [Out of Town](http://archiveofourown.org/works/2580596/chapters/5743598) is now underway!


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